The Myopic Blogosphere

Jazz over at Running Scared points us to a project which Joe Gandleman (aka The Moderate Voice) was involved with over the weekend.

Joe moderated a panel discussion at Stanford Law School entitled: "eDemocracy: The Role of Blogs and Online Activitists in 2004." He's got the text of his prepared comments posted on his blog. Very interesting stuff!

The main topics of the discussion were, 1.) why blogs only had a limited impact on the 2004 election, 2.) why blogging rarily equals true "journalism", 3.) preaching to the blogosphere choir and why that changes few minds.

It seems to me that the political side of the blogosphere is by far the most competetive in terms of blogs scrambling to gain a larger share of the market, as it were. This dog eat dog scramble to gain more readers offers a huge incentive to bloggers to preach to the choir. Diverging from the dominent ideological meme risks alienating some of their readers. They look at what the Big Boys and Girls of the blogosphere who have a similiar partisan bent are talking about and emulate it... which just reinforces the ideological hardline slant of both sides of the blogosphere. And that alienates those in the middle who might otherwise be open to persuasion.

Actually, many of the smaller blogs are more hardline than the Big Boys (and Girls). Posting outrageously over-the-top rhetoric gets you noticed... which attracts the choir and in theory leads to more readers waiting with baited breath to see what new outrageous thing will be posted. It's hyper-partisanship run amok in many cases. But, as long as it is a strategy that works it will continue to be employed.

Anyway... go read Joe's post. Good stuff, I promise.