The Fifth Estate is a socio-cultural reference to groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, and is most associated with

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

gers,

journalists A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

or "social license". The "Fifth" Estate extends the sequence of the three classical ''

Estates of the Realm The estates of the realm, or three estates, were the broad orders of social hierarchy used in Christendom (Christian Europe) from the Middle Ages to early modern Europe. Different systems for dividing society members into estates developed and ...

'' and the preceding '' Fourth Estate'', essentially the mainstream press. The use of "fifth estate" dates to the

1960s counterculture The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...

, and in particular the influential '' The Fifth Estate'', an underground newspaper first published in Detroit in 1965.

Web-based technologies The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web s ...

have enhanced the scope and power of the Fifth Estate far beyond the modest and boutique conditions of its beginnings. Nimmo and Combs assert that political pundits constitute a Fifth Estate. Media researcher Stephen D. Cooper argues that

gers are the Fifth Estate. William Dutton has argued that the Fifth Estate is not simply the blogging community, nor an extension of the media, but 'networked individuals' enabled by the Internet, e.g.

, in ways that can hold the other estates accountable. Making reference to the medieval concept of "three

estates of the realm The estates of the realm, or three estates, were the broad orders of social hierarchy used in Christendom (Christian Europe) from the Middle Ages to early modern Europe. Different systems for dividing society members into estates developed and ...

" (

clergy Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...

nobility Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy (class), aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below Royal family, royalty. Nobility has often been an Estates of the realm, estate of the realm with many e ...

, and

commoner A commoner, also known as the ''common man'', ''commoners'', the ''common people'' or the ''masses'', was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither ...

s) and to a more recently developed model of ''" four estates"'', which encompasses the media,

Nayef Al-Rodhan Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan ( ar, نايف الروضان; born 1959) is a Saudi philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author. He is an honorary fellow of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom, and senior fello ...

introduces the weblogs (

blogs A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

) as a "fifth estate of the realm". Blogs have potential and real influence on contemporary policy-making, especially in the context of elections, reporting from conflict zones, and raising dissent over corporate or legislative policies. Based on these observations, Al-Rodhan suggests moving beyond traditional thinking that limits the “estates of the realm” to governmental action and proposes a broader perspective in which civilians or anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can contribute to the global political change and security.

Blogs and social media as a Fifth Estate

Of all the blogs on the Internet, continues Al-Rodhan, only a few have a real power to influence the policy-making process, specifically political and current affairs blogs with large and involved audiences. These blogs can help organize the public to take a stance on an issue, be used in political campaigns, help cultivate grassroots movements, and assist in fundraising. Furthermore, blogs have several unique features that give them potential influence in policy making: a lack of editorial supervision, low barriers to entry, difficulty for governments to censor or control content, and the ease of responding to events in real time. Blogs can affect policy-making by providing insider information, facilitating

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

between experts, promoting grassroots efforts, discrediting political figures, and setting policy agendas. Al-Rodhan concludes, governments must increase surveillance of blogs and develop legal, administrative, and technological tools to dissuade bloggers from posting potentially harmful information, such as calls to incite terrorism. On a more positive note, blogs have also the potential to prevent governments from adopting hasty and misjudged decisions. Building on this work, Wallsten empirically assessed the impact of political bloggers as a "fifth estate" during the 2004 US presidential campaign. Specifically, he used

time-series analysis In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Exa ...

to determine the extent to which political bloggers followed the mainstream media's agenda or set the mainstream media's agenda. He found that there was a complex, bidirectional relationship between mainstream media coverage and blog discussion rather than a unidirectional media or blog

agenda setting Agenda setting describes the "ability (of the news media) to influence the importance placed on the topics of the Political agenda, public agenda". The study of agenda-setting describes the way media attempts to influence viewers, and establish a ...

effect. In a speech at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

on October 17, 2019,

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...

gave a description of social media and the power it gives to people:

"People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a 'Fifth Estate' alongside the other power structures of society. People no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences. I understand the concerns about how tech platforms have centralized power, but I actually believe the much bigger story is how much these platforms have decentralized power by putting it directly into people’s hands."

References

{{Reflist Social media Social influence Information society Influence of mass media Journalism

Blogs and social media as a Fifth Estate

See also

References