A number of incidents such as the "Obama-is-a-Muslim" rumor during the 2008 presidential election suggest that influential political blogs are playing a major role in setting the agenda of the legacy media. The power of the political blogosphere is forcing media practitioners, communication scholars and political theorists to re-conceptualize how issues arrive on the political and public agenda. This new phenomenon challenges the fundamental assumptions of agenda-setting theory to the extent that the 42-year old model, including the notion of a shared public agenda, should be reevaluated. By situating news agenda research within a larger intellectual context of agenda setting, this dissertation explored the intermedia agenda-setting relationship between political blogs and legacy news media, such as newspapers, network TV, and cable TV channels. Analyzing the contents count data of political blogs and legacy media and Internet Search Volume Index (SVI) data, this dissertation explored how coverage of a certain issue by top-ranking and influential political blogs may predict the coverage of the same issue by legacy news media. Employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, the results of the study revealed that political blogs significantly predicted the coverage of the legacy media on the "Obama-is-a-Muslim" rumor over a period of five days. The results also showed that the coverage of the rumor by both the political blogs and legacy media significantly predicted the level of Internet searches related to the rumor on all five days. The study also found positive and statistically significant correlations between the coverage by the political blogs and legacy media on the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor and the volume of Internet searches on that rumor. The correlation was high on day 1, and decreased on each subsequent day. The study also found bi-directional agenda-setting relationships between the coverage of the political blogs and legacy media on the `Obama-is-a-Muslim' rumor. However, there was hardly any bi-directional relationship between the coverage of political blogs of the rumor and the volume of Internet searches related to the rumor. Although, the study found bi-directional relationship between the coverage of the legacy media on the rumor and the volume of Internet searched related to the rumor, the relationship faded away quickly. However, the study findings suggest that the perceived power of political blogs should be seen as trivial and ephemeral while that of the legacy news media should be seen as substantial and indelible in setting the public agenda. These findings may broaden our understanding of intermedia agenda-setting.

Research has revealed that more Americans than ever are turning to the World Wide Web as their primary source for news and information instead of legacy media outlets such as printed newspapers and magazines and broadcast news. As more and more people rely on the Internet as a primary source for news, it is important to analyze the characteristics and content of online news to expose and correct problems associated with the practices that inform its production and presentation. There are several longstanding practices in the American journalistic tradition that have been adapted to the online news environment. The practices of market segmentation and gatekeeping are two such practices. To date, few studies have explored how internet news coverage differs when the same story is altered to address the perceived interests of specific target audiences. This goal of this study was to collect and examine the characteristics of news stories presented on the homepages of three news websites—the Huffington Post, Huffington Post Black Voices and News One—to arrive at conclusions about the similarities and differences in how news content is reported to a general audience and to an African-American audience. This exploratory study used both Web sphere analysis and qualitative analysis to examine the collected homepage news stories. It used the results of the analyses to explore the possible effects continued market segmentation and selective exposure online could have on discourse in the public sphere. The study found that the legacy media practice of market segmentation was evident when online news reporting on targeted and untargeted news website homepages was compared. The study also revealed that the traditional role of the Black Press in legacy media has been resurrected in new media and is evident on news websites produced by African-Americans, for an African-American audience. Additionally, a qualitative examination of online news coverage of President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address and the death of Trayvon Martin revealed that the targeted audience influences the editorial slant through which news websites report stories.