Liveblogging

Last updated February 20, 2024

A liveblog is blog posting intended to provide coverage of an ongoing event in rolling text, similar to live television or live radio. Liveblogging has increased in usage by news organizations and blogging establishments since the mid-2000s, when it was initially used to broadcast updates of technology conferences in the absence of or alongside streaming video captures, and like microblogging, has gained currency as an online publication format which performs the same function as live television news coverage.

Operation

Incorporative of microblogs (which are continuously updated but are also used widely as a short-form liveblogging platform), a liveblog is a single post which is constantly updated by one or more authors (usually on-location correspondents) with up-to-the-minute logs of the goings-on, and are usually performed during specific types of events rather than as regular features. Furthermore, during longer-running events beyond the length of twenty-four hours (such as civil, political or military events), a liveblog post will be ended after a 24-hour period and followed by a successive liveblog post for the next 24 hours.

Content and appearance

A live blog is a single post which is continuously updated with timestamped micro-updates which are placed above previous micro-updates.

During liveblogs, a wide number of media, including video, audio, images and text, can be incorporated in order to explain what is going on at a specific location. Such content may be posted from external sources, such as other press agencies and non-employees, if such content is only available from those sources (i.e., a live blog of an event by Al Jazeera English may post embedded video from CNN or YouTube if such video is centrally relevant to a recent occurrence within the scope of the event and is credited to authors affiliated with such organizations).

Live blogs are usually ordered from top-to-bottom so that the most recent updates appear at the top of the post.^{[ citation needed ]} Posts may also be automatically updated using JavaScript-based auto-refreshes (by the minute) which do not reload the entire webpage.^[2]

Relevance

Comparison with live broadcasting

Because of their synchronous nature, live blogs have been compared to live broadcasting on television and radio in their immediacy and currency. However, such blogs are almost always used for coverage of, and commentary on, one-time or specialized events, and live blogging is not yet widely considered a regular section-specific feature for most online news services, while news specialty channels tend to provide almost 24-hour live studio broadcasts in audio and/or video format without necessarily focusing dedicated coverage on specific current events except when necessary.

Usage

The format is most regularly used for blow-by-blow coverage of concurrently-occurring events, such as sports competitions. Other events which are increasingly regularly live-blogged are:

Elections
Ceremonies
Conferences, conventions and gatherings
Protests and conflicts
Natural events and disasters
Politically-restive countries

The format was originally devised by Gareth Owen for the BBC's coverage of the 2001 UK parliament budget and Owen and the BBC continued to pioneer the format for many years after. The format was later applied by websites such as Gizmodo, Engadget, Techcrunch and Macworld in 2003-2005 for coverage of technology-related events (such as the Macworld Expo's series of Stevenote's and the WWDC) first gained notoriety among news organizations during the coverage of the 2009 anti-government protests in Iran.

Further enhancement of the medium by the BBC and other media organizations accompanied later events such as Cablegate and the Arab Spring. The Guardian had been publishing "minute-by-minute" reports of local (and later locally-involved global) sports events since April 2001,^[3] but didn't first begun to publish official "minute-by-minutes" in the Politics blog until June 2007^[4] (posts titled as "LIVE" or formatted to give time-stamped updates on events extend to as far as 2003^[5]), followed by more Guardian blogs adopting minute-by-minute formats for special events afterward.

News organizations have become increasingly adoptive of such platforms as 24liveblog, Livefyre, CoverItLive, Live Blog,Arena and ScribbleLive which allow for a dedicated box in which to publish short-form and mid-form updates with automatic, dynamically-generated appearances of the most recent posts.

A recent peer-reviewed publication outlines the utilization and perception of live blogging coverage at a physical therapy conference.^[6] The authors concluded that live blogging extended the viewing audience and facilitated viewer engagement. Survey respondents found the coverage educational, of high quality, and would participate again in the future.

Impact on journalism

The live blogging format is controversial for readers of news websites in that the presentation is a clear departure from more traditional methods of news gathering and presentation, both on- and offline.^[7] Matt Wells, blogs editor for The Guardian, contended that live blogs, rather than being the "death of journalism", will actually be the "embodiment of its future".^[8]

Related Research Articles

Dave Winer is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

A blog is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were often the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Video clips refer to mostly short videos, which are usually silly jokes and funny clips, often from movies or entertainment videos such as those on YouTube. Short videos on TikTok and YouTube often influence popular culture and internet trends. Such clips are usually taken out of context and have many gags in them. Sometimes they can be used to attract the public to the user's other accounts or their long-form videos. The term is also used more loosely to mean any video program, including a full program, uploaded onto a website or other medium.

BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal BBC radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcasting virtually all major sports events staged in the UK or involving British competitors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News media</span> Elements of mass media that focus on delivering news

The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public. These include news agencies, newspapers, news magazines, news channels etc.

A milblog or warblog is a blog devoted mostly or wholly to covering news events concerning an ongoing war. Sometimes the use of the term "warblog" implies that the blog concerned has a pro-war slant. The term "milblog" implies that the author is a member of, or has some connection to the military; the more specific term "soldierblog" is sometimes used for the former.

A vlog, also known as a video blog or video log, is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one take or cut into multiple parts. Unlike more generic video diary, vlogs are often recorded as a selfie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typepad</span> Blogging service

Typepad is a blogging service owned by Endurance International Group, previously owned by SAY Media.

This is a list of blogging terms. Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialized vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GamePolitics.com</span> Blogging site

GamePolitics.com was a blog which covered the politics of computer and video games. GamePolitics was launched by freelance journalist Dennis McCauley in March 2005. At the time, McCauley was the video game columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, a position he held from 1998 to 2009. Growing somewhat bored of writing video game reviews, McCauley created GamePolitics in order to track the political, legal and cultural impact of video games. The site was often referred to as GP by followers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MacRumors</span> News website focused on Apple, Inc.

MacRumors is an American website that reports and aggregates Apple Inc.- and Mac-related news, rumors, and information.

Digital journalism, also known as netizen journalism or online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. What constitutes digital journalism is debated by scholars; however, the primary product of journalism, which is news and features on current affairs, is presented solely or in combination as text, audio, video, or some interactive forms like storytelling stories or newsgames, and disseminated through digital media technology.

Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links", which may be the major reason for their popularity. Some popular social networks such as Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr, Koo, and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.

GroundReport was a citizen journalism website that enabled contributors to publish news reports and videos. The site was owned by a nonprofit organization called Open News Platform until mid-2017. Since the site did not attract enough donations and advertisement revenue to sustain it, Open News Platform sold the GroundReport.com domain and platform to Search-Ladder, LLC in 2017. Search-Ladder is a digital marketing agency. The sale was completed in May 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bloggingheads.tv</span> Video blog web site

Bloggingheads.tv is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers. The site was started by the journalist and author Robert Wright and the blogger and journalist Mickey Kaus on November 1, 2005. Kaus has since dropped out of operational duties of the site as he didn't want his frequent linking to be seen as a conflict of interest. Most of the earlier discussions posted to the site involved one or both of those individuals, but since has grown to include a total of over one thousand individual contributors, mostly journalists, academics, scientists, authors, well known political bloggers, and other notable individuals.

While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard". Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.

Posterous was a simple blogging platform started in May 2008. It supported integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics package, and custom themes. It was based in San Francisco and funded by Y Combinator.

ScribbleLive was a content cloud provider used by brands, sports, and media companies. It was based in Toronto.

Nico Pitney is an American journalist, editor and media executive who has helped lead several prominent left-leaning media outlets, including HuffPost and NowThis.

Ghost is an open source blogging platform written in JavaScript and distributed under the MIT License, designed to simplify the process of online publishing for individual bloggers as well as online publications.

References

↑ Johansen, Dag; Endestad, Tore; Riiser, Haakon; Griwidz, Carsten; Halvorsen, Pål; Johansen, Håvard; Aarflot, Tjalve; Hurley, Joseph; Kvalnes, Åge; Gurrin, Cathal; Zav, Sorin; Olstad, Bjørn; Aaberg, Erik (2009). DAVVI: A prototype for the next generation multimedia entertainment platform. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/1631272.1631482. Figure 2: BBC Live Text Commentary snippet
↑ Schonfeld, Erick (22 May 2008). "ScribbleLive: Two Guys In Canada Launch Sweet Liveblogging Platform". techcrunch . Retrieved 31 March 2012.
↑ Biggs, Matt (2001-04-17). "Valencia 1 - 0 Arsenal (agg 2 - 2)". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2020-08-17.
↑ Hélène Mulholland (4 June 2007). "Labour deputy leadership hustings live". The Guardian.
↑ Matthew Tempest (5 February 2003). "Today at PMQs". The Guardian.
↑ Pascoe, Michael A.; Robertson, Eric K. (January 2019). "Utilization and perception of live-blogging coverage of an international manual physical therapy conference". Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy. 27 (1): 43–53. doi:10.1080/10669817.2018.1528030. ISSN 1066-9817. PMC 6338288 . PMID 30692842.
↑ "The Guardian Newsblog and the Death of Journalism". The Louse & the Flea. 22 February 2011.
↑ Matt Wells (28 March 2011). "How live blogging has transformed journalism". The Guardian .