The Not-so-Power of the Blog
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published February 16, 2007, 4:56 pm in Voting & Partisanship, Rhetoric.
It sounds like I'm writing about my own power, but don't worry: I have no illusions about my popularity in the blogosphere. What I'm talking about is my colleagues' abilities to change the world. Not my own ability, mind you, and not the ability of any sole blogger out there. In the aggregate, however, bloggers constitute quite a political force
.This may bring up the question whether I write a blog or not. I generally think of it as a column and not a blog, because my columns tend to be a lot longer than most blogs and because I would rather call myself a "political columnist" than a "political blogger," and that last reason gets my point. Political blogs are all over the place. One could even say that the internet is paved with them. Some are big and read by hundreds or thousands, and others have very little to no readership. But as a whole, they are working to change politics as we know it.
The magazine Campaigns and Elections has published quite a few articles recently about the importance of blogs in politics, and it seems that they're just reporting the facts. The importance of bloggers has risen dramatically since Howard Dean was considered revolutionary in 2004 for mobilizing his grassroots campaign through the internet. Now it seems that blogs can either make or break a candidate.
Youtube is another facet of this. A politician always had to be on guard, but now it's mulitplied by a billion internet users. Use a cameraphone to catch a politician saying something stupid, and within a few days, that video can be strewn all over the web. It's actually quite scary how the major news media outlets get a lot of their stories from web content, stories that are often first broken by bloggers!
Bloggers are the watchdogs now, and they bring with them a wonderful sense accountability and a scary sense of vitriol.
I still can't believe how much crap I saw online about Barack Hussein Obama (I use his middle name here, only for the sake of full disclosure--I don't want people saying that I'm covering the "fact" that he's Muslim. By the way, see my previous entry for more about Obama's heritage.). One reader went as far as calling him "Banana Hussy Obama." I really don't get that. The guy even called him numerous other names, trying to play on consonants in Obama's name. Another commenter chastized him for it, but it shows how people think, as well as how the internet is being used.
With so many computers and connections out there, anyone can get his face in the all-important limelight. It's kind of like American idol: people are willing to make fools of themselves if they can get on TV, or maybe even get people to read their blog. These political personalities are always on some vague line between showbiz lying and political activism (which aren't so far apart, anyway). Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh, and, oh my, Ann Coulter are all that way. Often, I don't know whether I should praise them or shun them. They, like the freaks who get on American Idol just to make fools of themselves, will do anything to make themselves more popular. Just look at the titles of their books, and you will see what I mean. This craziness that we call punditry is really just a form of showbusiness under a different guise. Heck, at some point, it's not even a different guise. Do we call Rush Limbaugh a pundit or a personality?
Even though blogs may attract a similar cadre of users, or at least for similar reasons, it can also become and is also becoming a force for true political change. If the blogosphere attacts or praises a candidate, it seems to happen en masse. Remember the Howard Dean scream from two years ago? If Youtube had been around then, it would have spread even more quickly. As it was, everyone saw it within two days. And thus, Howard Dean was dead in the water.
But the parties are still heavily divided. Even though the attacks and the praise happen all at once, they are still heavily divided. Those that praise Obama will always praise Obama, and those that hate him will always hate him, no matter what their reasons are. The blogosphere is not some idealized political space where everyone gets along. Far from it, the blogosphere is more like a huge community where readers and writers can lock themselves up with those that feel just like them. They can then bolster their own opinions by listening to those who think the same way.
It's kind of like I used to tell my freshman English students who were trying to learn academic argument. I would have them civic arguments, and many of them wanted to write about the big issues--the death penalty, abortion, gun control. They wanted to express why they believed the way they did, and I was proud of them for wanting to tackles these subjects. It's a part of being civic minded that people want to express their reasoned opinions. Then why would I always council them away from these papers toward much more mundane issues such as why the science building needed a new computer lab or why the university needed to adopt fair trade coffee? For a very simple reason:
A short essay won't change anyone's mind.
My students were writing three-page essays, you see. Will a three-page essay on why abortion is wrong change anyone's mind? Nope. The audience would have to be composed of members of the opposite side, and their opinion on the subject would NEVER be changed by this kind of short essay. So the student is writing just to blow smoke, or he or she is writing to those that already agree. And there's really no point to that.
So my question is this: if blogs really do have the power to change the political world, how do they do it? Within a party, I understand how they work. But as far as reaching voters of the other side, I'm not sure. I sometimes read both conservative and liberal blogs, but I'm never convinced of something that I don't already agree with. Blogs just don't have that kind of reasoned argument to make cases. Heck, they're normally just snippets. Just see how many blogs say some phrase such as "Bush lied to the American people" and see how many people disagree. None, that's how many. Why? Because only those who already agree would ever read someone's blog who says that kind of thing.
So as source of accountability, as a way to mobilize the core, and as a means to sway the swing voter, the blog has far-reaching consequences. As a means to change anyone's opinion, I'm not so sure. And if I convinced you of that, then, well, I guess I'm wrong.
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