Establishing Institutional Authority in the Blogosphere

Atrios had an insightful post yesterday into the psychology of blog linking called "You Link It, You Own It."

the less something you link to has the stamp of official authority, the more you've taken responsibility for it. That is, if I link to the paper of record, then I own the responsibility for it 10% and they own it 90%. But, if I link to "some person on the internets somewhere" who has no established institutional credibility (or lack of) then I own it 95%.

Echo Chamber Project blog is still in the incubation phase without any established institutional authority from any larger community. Outside certain filmmaking circles and a cover story in a weekly alternative, I'm a relatively unknown independent filmmaker and rogue journalist.

Below is my paradigm for how an independent documentary filmmaker can potentially quickly establish institutional authority within an established community by using transparent principles of open source content development.

Establishing institutional authority within the blogosphere typically takes a lot of time to build up trust within this established community -- It is a slow climb up the food chain where the ultimate goal is to be linked from the most credible sources within the hierarchy of credibility -- Eschaton [Atrios], Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos on the Left -- and Instapundit, The Corner, and Little Green Footballs on the Right.

Atrios explains more about his decision-making process for linking:

In other words, the less likely it is that anyone would have heard about something without my bringing it to their attention, the more I've taken the responsibility for verifying the information.

Established authorities take risks by linking to and vouching for new and unknown bloggers who are trying to break through the noise and make a political impact.

Here are the four steps that need to be taken before my relatively new Echo Chamber Project blog can establish any credibility within the larger blogosphere:

1.) Interview people who already have institutional authority within a certain community.
2.) Open source the interviews by transcribing and posting them on this website.
3.) Mail the interview transcript and audio CD to the interviewee so that they can verify the transcription.
4.) Find an established, third-party institutional authority to verify the transcripts via the interviewee or via the video & transcript. Once verified, then this third party vouch for this project within the community that they have established their credibility.

I have completed step #1 by interviewing over 40 established experts -- including journalists, journalism professors, think tank scholars, media critics, former government analysts and other people who have all have a certain degree of institutional authority.

I am still going through the process of steps #2, 3 and 4.

Because for all anyone knows, I could be pulling off an elaborate hoax where I pretend to have interviewed all of these experts or completely doctored all of the transcripts of the interviews.

I could turn out to be the next Jayson Blair, and diminish the credibility of anyone who closely associates themselves with me.

But the more transparent that I make this post-production process, then the harder it would be for me to pull off a hoax that would be this elaborate.