The national media attention that blanketed campus this spring has long since passed, six months after the first charges of rape were handed down against members of the 2005-2006 men's lacrosse team.
But among a fiercely devoted community of bloggers, there are still updates, discussions and critiques posted daily.
The vast majority of these online commentators are pro-defense, not connected to Duke and critical of both Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong's actions and how the mainstream media-particularly newspapers-have covered the story.
The rape accusation against, and subsequent indictments of, the former Duke players continue to be dissected online.
"Given the nature of the blogosphere I'm not surprised anymore at anything like this. There are 300 million people in the country-a few of them are inevitably going to take an interest," said Kurt Andersen, a writer for New York Magazine. "It's a compelling story."
Andersen recently published a piece entitled "Rape, Justice, and the 'Times,'" criticizing the New York Times' coverage of the case and praising the work of KC Johnson, a professor at Brooklyn College who has run the lacrosse case blog "Durham-in-Wonderland" since April.
Unlike the many blogs that primarily analyze media coverage of the story, Johnson has been lauded in the blogging community for reviewing legal documents and doing his own investigation into issues such as the financing of Nifong's election campaign and Durham activist Victoria Peterson's background.
"I'm not interested in just throwing together a blog that's just useless speculation or saying nasty things about Nifong without substantiating them," he explained. "That would, to me, just hurt the cause."
Despite the reporting he conducts for some of his posts, Johnson said he does not consider himself a journalist.
"I'm a professor who is writing about the case," he said. "My blog certainly seems to have some impact in shaping how some people think."
In addition to Nifong, newspapers have come under attack from bloggers who accuse them of being unobjective and ignoring crucial evidence.
"I've been critical of the Raleigh News and Observer from the first day I started blogging because it does a lot of things poorly and I think it's very biased," said John, a Duke alumnus who maintains the blog "John in Carolina" and declined to disclose his surname.
The coverage that bloggers provide can be influential, Andersen said, noting the forged National Guard memos used in a September 2004 "60 Minutes" piece, the authenticity of which was first questioned by bloggers.
"Bloggers have the luxury to do things the mainstream media don't... because of their passion and their focus," Andersen explained. "Bloggers don't have the fetters of institutional standards and editors and all those good things the mainstream media has."
"It can work both ways and requires readers to judge them accordingly," he added.
Johnson, who is not connected to Duke, said he was initially attracted to the case because of the "inexplicable response" of the University's faculty to the incident.
But he said he has stayed involved because the further he looked into the case, the more he was troubled by Nifong's actions and the silence of Duke's faculty.
"Usually when you learn more about something it's more nuanced, there are more shades of gray as more information comes to light," he said. "This is a case where it's been the opposite."
Michael McCusker, a New Jersey lawyer who posts almost daily on his blog, said he was prompted to start writing after meeting indicted player Reade Seligmann's father at a youth lacrosse game in May, and has continued because he feels obligated to remedy the injustices he sees in the investigation and prosecution.
"I felt that something had to be done and whatever I might do, whatever voice I might be able to raise, even if it's just shouting at windmills, would be doing some small part to rectify this travesty," McCusker said.
Both Johnson and McCusker said they did not expect to become so invested in their blogs.
"The blog and the time that it takes me and the scheduling and prioritizing that I must now engage in was wholly unexpected and really unintended," McCusker said. "This is not something now that I can just add to sporadically or intermittently."
Although there were a few blogs started in the spring that supported the alleged victim and the prosecution, most of these are no longer operational.
"At this point I don't know of any blogs that are pro-Nifong.... If you're inclined to take a pro-Nifong view, there's nothing much you can say beyond 'Trust Nifong,'" Johnson said. "That is, in my opinion, very unusual. Usually you get blogs that are sort of on both sides."
As blogs become generally more prolific, it is not uncommon for reporters to use them to stay abreast of developments in all arenas, Andersen said.
"I don't know if [NYT reporter] Duff Wilson spends much time with the blogs on this case," Andersen said. "If I were he, I certainly would."
It is difficult to measure how influential blogs are because the medium requires an audience that actively seeks it, said Kenneth Rogerson, research director for Duke's DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy.
"I think the impact is not potentially as strong as some people might make it out to be because it's not necessarily easy to find these blogs," he explained.
Since Aug. 28, Durham-in-Wonderland has received approximately 160,000 page visits from about 100,000 visitors, Johnson said, adding that Oct. 16-the day after a "60 Minutes" segment examined the case-his site received nearly 14,000 unique visitors, its highest single-day total.
Ultimately, the crucial components that determine the influence a blog wields are its writing quality and the legitimacy of the claims in its posts, Rogerson said.
"Bloggers have to have a thoughtful, reasoned approach to it, and if they do it's going to make a lot of difference," he said. "But after a while if it doesn't seem like the person writing is a credible source or the writings's not good, you roll your eyes into the ceiling and you move on."
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