A New Force in American Politics
OverviewOne of the points that is discussed is the difference between progressive and conservative blogs.
Since March of 2005, the total number of blogs has grown from 7.8 million to 14.2 million. At this rate, the online universe is doubling in size every five months.This memois a comprehensive look at the underlying dynamics of these online communities, along with a targeted analysis of how to engage them to generate political power.
The Right-Wing and Blogs: An Integrated, Top-Down ApproachProgressive Blogs must become more local and campaigns must recognize their potential.
Conservatives use the same tactics on blogs that they do in mainstream politics - attack the media and attack progressives. The right wing tends not to build independent online communities, using their existing offline communities to generate web sites that reinforce their politics and their ideology.
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The Left-Wing and Blogs: Building Digital Communities
Progressive blogs build communities of activists and generate new political activity online. Blogs and online organizations offer forums where people can actively engage in progressive politics - real involvement from people talking about politics, policy, organizing, their lives, etc. The degree to which progressive blogs encourage active engagement in political dialogue has fueled their rapid growth over the past several years.
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 was already a fairly coherent political world.
The power of a single blog is relatively small - it is the interlinking of blogs into a larger "blogosphere" that is meaningful. To harness this power and use it to drive message, money and activism, you must invest in organizing this constituency. One cannot e-mail large national bloggers and expect their attention on local candidates or issues. Instead, you need to create your own blogosphere out of existing small and locally focused blogs, and invest time interacting with local online communities.Here in the Pacific Northwest we have a tool available for local political campaigns, The Pacific Northwest Portal.
As you can see from the chart on the left over 60% of the viewers of Middle Earth Journal are from the Eastern and Central Time zones. Fellow Pamphleteer, Jazz Shaw and MEJ source Bill in DC are both located on the East Coast. As a result we have concentrated on National and International issues. As the 2006 election cycle approaches I intend to cover more local issues. Posts that are local in nature will begin with the icon. The Republican political machine has been successful because of active local politics. Local politics is the path to regaining power for progressives and blogs will be a powerful tool.
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