There's a fascinating article on Salon about Mark Warner, Jerome Armstrong, and the state of the "liberal blogosphere." This paragraph jumped out at me:
... less than three years out from the presidential election, the netroots has grown large enough, and influential enough, to begin to cleave along ideological and pragmatic lines, as Internet activists debate the best way forward. "They are the agenda setters for the agenda setters," observes Michael Cornfield, a political scientist at George Washington University who studies political blogs. Already, nascent presidential campaigns are watching Warner's use of Armstrong very closely, making lists of the small number of liberal bloggers whose opinions carry weight among their peers. "They are a new class of consultants," says one Democratic strategist who is preparing a 2008 presidential campaign.
Bloggers as the "agenda settesr for the agenda setters" and a "new class of consultants?" Is all that really true? And, if so, is it a good thing or a bad thing?
Or, is "Virginia Centrist" correct when he argues:
No one cares what bloggers say other than a smattering of activists and the few journalists who read them for amusement (and don't take them seriously). Why you've built blogging up to be more than it is - well, that's beyond me. This is for goofs. For shits and giggles, if you will. It has almost no effect on anything - positive or negative.
Something tells me the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Blogging is NOT just for "shits and giggles," but it's also not the "be all and end all" of human existence, either. Far from it. Still, it's fascinating to see 2008 Presidential candidates rushing to hire prominent bloggers. Why would they do this if they didn't believe that blogging was important? Any thoughts?
it's basically a new technology, like the telephone, the fax, the computer, email and email lists...
but this one breaks down the "1 to many" communication modes of radio, TV, mail and have an infrastructure which enables:
"1 to many + 1 to 1 + many to 1"
mass communication and manages it from becoming chaos and noise.
It also is an information tool due to hyperlinks in conversation. How many in a casual physical group, talk or encounter, can pull out a 210 page study to give their argument some credibility?
So, like the telephone, the cell phone, high bandwidth applications, TV, interactive media (which is also another way to classify a blog) will become ubiquitous and most certainly the best software for scalability and management is scoop currently (which dailykos is based on).
Interactive communications expanding the 1 to 1 or the 1 to many paradigm will certainly become more prevalent and I think leads to a better Democracy because so many more voices can be heard and there are mechanisms within the software to "filter out" the noise as well.
In terms of "leaders" and "consultants" I doubt it would take on the level of the "political guru" of the past simply because it's a different culture and paradigm, unless the owner of a particular site also happens to be a political guru.
I also agree that the blogworld isn't taken that seriously by the general public either--in part, I suspect because its portrayed in the MSM in usually its most negative light (e.g. people venting obscenities and vicious personal attacks anonymously).
Having said that--blogs strike me as a very useful organizing tool--there's a real positive upside. I don't think we're anywhere close to maxing out that potential.
In the case of this primary I know that I have a much broader picture of how this one is shaping up than I would otherwise. I'm able to get viewpoints from all parts of the state that I would never be able to find in a newspaper. I have a much better understanding of who the candidates are thanks to blogs. Sure some of the portrayls are partisan, but there's enough information out there to sift through the good and bad info.
I don't think blogs will ever replace the traditional voter recruitment and political organization methods (e.g. neighborhood networks, phone banking, going door-to-door, tv ads); however, candidates would be foolish to ignore blogs entirely.
So far we've really only had a handful of real netroots candidates on the national level--and up to this point none have made a serious play deep into an election (one of the reasons that a lot of people dismiss blogs and the netroots). I think it's only a matter of time though before a netsroot movement makes a serious play in a federal election. Maybe it will be with Webb; maybe it will be another 10 years or so. It's just a matter of time.
Saying that "blogs have no impact" is like saying "magazines have no impact." Most magazines don't have any impact, but some do . . . some do.