The Masal Bugduv hoax: Football blogging and journalistic authority

In the latter half of 2008 a still-unidentified hoaxer created a fictional soccer player named Masal Bugduv. Initially the subject of blog forum posts made by the hoaxer, Bugduv climbed the feeding chain of European football media by going from an insertion in a Wikipedia page, to comments in forums, to blog posts, and then – after making the leap to more mainstream media – to a football magazine and finally to the ‘Football’s Top 50 Rising Stars’ list of 2009 in The Times (London). This article analyzes the Bugduv hoax as a case study of sources of journalistic authority in blogs. A brief history of the hoax is presented followed by a rhetorical analysis of reasons why the hoax was successful. Although Bugduv eventually jumped journalistic platforms from internet to print, the communications that the hoaxer initiated with the audience were entirely on blogs. By considering the textual dynamics successfully used by the hoaxer in claiming sufficient journalistic authority to sustain the hoax, the sources of journalistic authority in blogs are examined and contrasted with those of traditional media.