The blogsphere is incredibly forgiving of mistakes. Indeed, mistakes are perhaps an important aspect to credibility on the Web. Often what makes bloggers credible isn't their impeccable accuracy, but rather their willingness and transparency in correcting errors.

The rough-cut tsunami videos also showed that these amateur qualities can add to the credible eye-witness qualities of these videos (think The Blair Witch Project.) Further proof of this is that staff-submitted articles to citizen-media websites, such as My Missourian and goskokie.com, are the least popular, though they are presumably the most polished.

At some point, however, errors, even simple ones involving spelling, syntax and grammar, become obnoxious and off-putting (think how dizzy you were after watching Blair Witch). At what point does this amateurism do from being an important quality to being a liability?

This question could help determine how much time bloggers should spend editing content vs. producing it. This pertains not only to written blogs, but perhaps more importantly to audio and video blogging. This is also an important question for mainstream media outlets, which might use citizen-produced content (the tsunami videos are a perfect example).

This is another subject which is ripe for research. Unfortunately, in a two-year master's program, you have to narrow down your research interests. Anyone interested in funding a blog/citizen-media research institute (or individual research projects)?

Just imagine all of the things we could study instead of setting out on these wild experiments without any what the outcome may be. A little funding would also make it possible for me to dedicate more time to these issues.