some preliminary thoughts

this blog is intended to document my thoughts and findings on my major research project. this essay will be 15,000 words long, and will examine the relationships between a blogger and her readership and a journalist and her readership. some questions i will want to examine early on include:

• what is a blog? how can it be defined?
  
• will i focus on one country (ie the uk) - probably yes, as it will be easiest to get access to uk bloggers and journalists.
  
• what is the nature of a blog readership - demographically speaking? is it possible to generalise about it? and the same applies to a newspaper readership - although perhaps easier to find out the latter.
  
• what will be the theoretical basis of my project? i had considered habermas initially, but i'm not entirely sure it is appropriate (nor am i particularly confident with the theory.