New Politics Institute rolls out Internet activism study

02:30 PM Aug 10, 2005

Hot off the presses, Chris Bowers of MyDD and Matthew Stoller of The Blogging of the President study up on the right and left blogospheres and their different relationships to the country's political discourse.

Sample conclusions:

• "The single most important difference between the blogospheres is this: the progressive blogosphere is introducing new actors into the political scene. The right-wing blogosphere is facilitating further organization of what wasalready a fairly coherent political world."
  
• "If they do not invest time, energy and resources building a local blog infrastructure superior to that currently possessed by conservatives, the comparative advantage of progressives' overall traffic lead will be significantly reduced."
  

An interesting report, and not the first to observe that some major conservative sites seem strangely uneasy with comments sections and community blogging, which are the norm on the left. But I sense a bit of question-begging here: blogs are plentiful enough to have ecological characteristics. Surely there is or has been or will soon be a right-wing blog with the architecture of a Daily Kos ... so, will the right tincture of system structure, erudition and publicity turn it into a monster, or not?

Put another way: are the qualitative differences between left and right blogospheres (even granting the debatable assumption that the authors accurately diagnose them) temporary, relating to some happenstance of the field in its infancy (such as, perhaps, the fact that conservatives were the earliest adopters, and liberals surged later after the technology had time to ripen)? Or is evolution of the Nemesis precluded by some fundamental aspect of conservatives' sociology or psychology, as the report suggests without quite venturing to state? And if that's the case, what sorts of analogous ideological blinders on the left might stand to inhibit the field? Could the communal nature of liberal blogs themselves be such a hobble?

The memo indulges a bit of condescension when it could be digging deeper -- even two of the four "strengths" it attributes to the right-wing blogosphere are actually familiar complaints about conservative media dominance. (The authors spice choler with irony by also nipping the right blogosphere for its propensity to gripe about the media.)

But it's a valuable contribution, and after all, it does what bloggers do best: start conversations. And at least as important for organizations just wading into blogs, it's got some practical suggestions for strategic implementation.

On a related note, NPI has also posted the 80-minute video last week's "Reflections of a Blogger" event with Joe Trippi and Markos Zuniga here.

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