• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.53
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• pp.73-99
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• 2011

This study compares blogs of professional reporters with those of citizen reporters in terms of watchdog and interactivity functions. Watchdog function was analyzed in light of the extent of soft news and the degree of critical relationship with the government. Interactivity was assessed by analyzing readers' comments on the articles of reporter blogs. for citizen journalism and for professional one were chosen in order to minimize any discrepancies caused by ideological differences. As a result of the content analyses, citizen reporter blogs were found to deliver soft news more frequently than those of , whereas the former had stronger tendency to maintain the critical relationship with the government than the latter. As for the interactivity function, although the number of comments uploaded to citizen reporter blogs was higher than that of professional reporter blogs, the latter was found to meet the standards of communicative interaction more adequately than the former.