A Linking Economy for Bloggers Could Mean a Headache for Readers

In a world where bloggers are striving to be the first to publish, have the most posts and shares, attract a loyal following, get the most site hits, and beat the competition… it’s easy to see how accuracy isn’t always on that list of important things.  As journalists, it’s common for bloggers to rely on linking information from other blogs to theirs, and vice versa. According to Ryan Holiday’s book, Trust me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, this tendency for bloggers is called the link economy. Essentially linking to someone else’s blog takes away the burden of completing research on a certain topic, and instead relies on the information published by another’s. This habit can help to build a following of people who are now trafficking other blogs. It can also help to establish a sense of community among other bloggers who depend on this traffic of sharing and spreading information quickly. However, there are issues with a link economy that can be bad news for readers.

For one, readers that are already trying to sift through what is accurate information must not merely trust blogs based on them being linked to others. This would which would appear to build credibility thus making a story true right? Wrong. First and foremost is the fact that the linked information may be incorrect places the burden of figuring this out on the reader. Or better yet is reliant on the blogger to complete their own research that’s not dependent on the work of others. When this doesn’t happen, an influx of false information is easily spread on the web every time the false story is linked to another blog. The unfortunate truth is that once something is published on the web, a sort of fire starts and is hard to put out. Avid readers must realize that this misleadingly can help build credibility to stories that continue to be published based on the principle of linking.

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