Blogs and the 2008 Election
My trip to the Blogworld New Media and Expo in Las Vegas was, in the end, something of a disappointment. It appeared to me that there were fewer political bloggers in attendance, while the number of attendees who were more concerned with trying to sell something to bloggers rather than learn or share anything about blogging was greatly increased over last year’s inaugural event.
The buzz at the conference was the 2008 election. I was somewhat surprised that there seemed to be very little discussion of the role of blogs in the political process given the strides made by leftwing blogs in organizing themselves into a force that has a voice in Democratic Party politics. Not much discussion either of how conservative blogs have lagged behind in this area and what can be done to change that situation.
I suppose it was unrealistic to expect that the political blogosphere might make some positive contributions to the 2008 election campaign. But judging by the smears and lies that are either created by bloggers or are simply echoed again and again on websites both right and left, along with the painfully shallow emphasis on whatever bloggers can blow up into a “gaffe” by hugely exaggerating some minor misstatement by either candidate, one is left with the sad conclusion that most blogs are contributing absolutely nothing of substance to this election.
While the nation is going through an economic crisis, trying to decide the best course of action in Iraq, and wrestling with serious questions of war, peace, and financial security, blogs as a whole are concerned with either promoting or knocking down the latest smear from their opponents. Or, even worse, trivializing the utterances of both candidates so that the elections seems more about the best way to make the opposition look bad by blowing a statement out of all sensible proportion while, at the same time, accusing the candidate of all manner of hair raising-perfidy.
Perhaps it is time to pause and ask “Is this the best blogs can do?”
Both campaigns send out a steady stream of news releases and emails highlighting these “gaffes” and then sit back and watch as blogs pounce on each incident, posting in real time so that in a few hours the blogospheric echo chamber has made an “issue” of it. Admittedly, some of these gaffes are real and deserve an airing. But there is nothing rational or reasoned about most of these distractions. Both campaigns and both sides of the blogosphere are at fault, so there is little to be gained by trying to point fingers at one side or the other and declare one side is “worse” than the other.
In a time of crisis, the fact that there is so much silliness reveals that the promise that blogs once represented has been shelved in the interest of partisan hackery. (Blogs are not necessarily responsible for this, but they nevertheless are the engine driving campaigns to play this game.)
Blogs are a unique form of information dissemination and, with their large,politically active readership, could have performed a valuable service to the public by explaining the issues at stake while advancing the cause of their favored candidates.
Some blogs are indeed helpful in this regard. On the center-left, Crooked Timber has good, incisive commentary on the issues featuring a plethora of very smart, very talented writers. Also, Jerlyn Merritt’s Talk Left has featured a partisan but reasonable take on the election.
Some of what the blogs introduced is entertaining, much of it is clever, precious little is wise. This election season, I had hoped to see pieces by bloggers that discuss various issues from a local or regional perspective, or, for example, health care and insurance industry workers discussing health care reform from their points of view. Such content is out there, but it takes forever to separate those posts from the greater volume of photoshopped cat pictures and Youtube’d fart jokes. Returning to my health care example, there are plenty of health care professionals blogging, but most spend far more time talking about every day events than composing lengthy articles about policy. (And really, is it reasonable to expect them to do so on the few daylight hours they have left each week?)
I rely on aggregators (such as PJM, blog carnivals, feed readers) to help find the better nuggets of posting. In this sense, I think the left has done a better job — it’s not so much a matter of the quality of their content, but that they make themselves easier to find.
It was a an American, Moynihan I believe, who said, and this is an approximate quote “Every one is entitled to their opinion, but no one is entitled to the facts”.
As I read blogs, American and Canadian, I am often reminded of the wisdom of this admonition. In my experience, 99% of all blogs are sites which glorify an opinion which is invariably based on only some of the facts.
Bloggers would perform a valuable public service if they considered all of the facts in forming their opinions. But bloggers are no different than the rest of us so it is unreasonable to expect otherwise.
But a blogger, or a small group of bloggers, could take up the challenge. Fact checking sites are useful but I don’t know of one that has compared the candidates positions side-by-side.
As for the impact of sites that are on the extremities of each side, they have done and are doing far more harm than good. The anonymity of the blogosphere is part of the problem. Rational people can and do say outrageous things that they would not otherwise say.
But to be fair, the parties and the candidates themselves have set the tone by not telling the truth about themselves and each other. So, to what extent are the politicians responsible? For as long as the parties and the candidates don’t tell the truth, there will be bloggers of either persuasion who will pounce on any lie.
And don’t get me going about the MSM.
It is very discouraging situation for both of our democracies. I am becoming more “independent” every passing day. So called “liberals” are more like socialists and “conservatives” are more liberal than ever before. What is a true liberal or a true conservative to do?
As for the financial crisis, you would be better off reading economists’ blogs than the political blogs. There are any number that are not overly encumbered by jargon.
“Meanwhile, there has been too much devotion to mudslinging”
What planet does Rick Moran live on? He apparently is desperately trying to be fair and objective to the point where his brains are falling out. Could he possible provide some specifics regarding the allegation that center-right blogs are engaging in mudslinging? When has Barack Obama ever been slandered by a center-right blogger? Even one example would be welcomed.
I think this article tries to make a complex question simple, but fails. Blogs are a communication medium that makes any person a commentator, journalist, evangelist with fewer barriers than any medium before it.
This makes blogs by their very nature, receptacle of endless amounts of garbage and some very good gems of content in between.
The mistake of many in the mainstream media is taking the breadth of blogs seriously instead of focusing on the small gems of good conversation and argument. Blogs also enforce a kind of groupthink that can become unhealthy. For example Moveon.orgs’s constant attacks on General Patreous in 2007 may have not caused on fuss on the left wing blogs, but once it was unleashed in mainstream media created a firestorm.
The same thing happened with immigration reform and the right wing blogs. Most right wingers were shocked to find out that many more republicans were moderate on immigration then originally thought.
I still love blogs. They allow me to sharpen my arguments and occasionally get enlightened by something I never knew before. But the fact is that blogs have a major role in allowing people to vent in ways they never thought possible. It is a useful outlet for many, but produces a blogosphere jammed with garbage and dittoheads.
For incisive analysis of the current financial meltdown, check out Blackhedd at the political blog http://www.redstate.com. His analysis and predictions have been uncannily accurate ever since this started.
I agree with Rick Moran that one of the greatest pisitives about the blogs is that occasional nugget of information from a well-informed poster that few were aware of. Unfortunately, you have to wade through a lot of crap to glean these nuggets, but such is the lot of we high-end news gatherers. The greatest problem and area of abuse I see on a daily and even hourly basis is this. Seemingly within minutes of an article being posted on some of the more popular blogsites (Real Clear Politics is a prime example) there can literally be several hundred comments to that article posted. And most of them appear to be from Obamaton sockpuppets regurgitation the Democrat talking points du jour. Few if any of them are interested in having a substantive exchange of ideas based on facts rather than feelings. Thus it becomes obvious that to a large extent this plethora of almost instantaneous responses from lefties spouting talking points is for the purpose of giving the appearance of a groundswell of support for their position and NOT for the purpose of giving and receiving information. THIS is what I would consider abuse.
American Thinker in particular does a very good job of policing this kind of stuff. Every post gets screened by a moderator, presumably screening out profanity, extreme incivility, and expecially screening out the aforementioned Astroturfing responses. (And no they do not screen out the leftists.) As a result, you get a lot of thoughtful commentary, and much more frequent ‘nuggets’ than most other blogsites. I realize a lot of blogs are essaentially a one man operation, but even these need to find a way to do at least a cursory amount of moderation to keep the sockpuppetry to a minimum.
Perhaps your conclusions have a self selection bias in them, and things are not nearly as bad for the blogoshpere as the conference suggests. During this very heated and controversial political season, I doubt many of the better political bloggers have the time to go to a conference on blogging. Larger groups like pajamas can spare someone to cover the event, but smaller operations like stratasphere probably cannot. My guess is that you had an over-representation of the non-political bloggers and people interested in becomming bloggers and press types who also blog. I for one rely heavily on a “trusted” group of bloggers to parse and analyze the mainstream news for the real substance.
The problem with blogs is ‘astroturfing’ by the campaigns. Although I am only aware of this being done by the left wing supporters, I can only assume it is done by both campaigns. Astroturfing by the PR firms will compromise all blogging on a whole variety of subjects and not just the elections.
“Was it realistic to expect blogs to do more?”
Not as you outline your expectations, no. But it’s not for the reasons you put forth. You seem to be expecting the majority of bloggers to think and write at the level of (good) professional journalists. That is unrealistic. Most bloggers are not professional writers, political analysts, or even particularly good fact finders. As both cause and consequence, objectivity is the first thing to go.
All human ability ranges over a bell curve and there is no reason to expect blogging to be any different, especially in a country and an age when the educational system (and philosophy in general) has eroded to its present level.
Given that, it’s actually surprising how many good blogs there are, both popular and lesser-known. In that respect, there is reason to be optimistic about the future.
Just as with early cable TV, when every amateur Joe Blow in a city could be on the air, blogging is in the process of winnowing out the amateurs. In a few years, there will be a large number of know-nothing yakkers and a few high-quality blogs, a process we already see at work.
“I can only assume it is done by both campaigns.”
Excuse me, what are you talking about? Please provide even one example of the McCain campaign engaging in such behavior. No, “astroturfing” is solely a Democratic party phenomenon. McCain’s people, if anything, have been to reticent concerning legitimate subjects like Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
David Thomson, I am on the “right side of things” and I sling plenty of sarcasm and mud at the left (mostly). When I started writing online and commenting I tried reasonable discourse but quickly found the left has no interest in that path (nor courage in person as evidenced by my trip to the KOS conference in vegas a few years back) so deciding I am better at giving what I get I spend my energy simply angering those with whom I disagree. So there is mud slinging on the right side of things.
To: David Thomson
“By both campaigns” is perhaps a misnomer. You may be pretending everything on the left-wing blogosphere to be planted by the Obama campaign, while everything from the right-wing blogosphere is from “independent” analysis.
This isn’t the case … while you are making believe that the McCain campaign is being reticent about Rev. Wright, the right-wing blogosphere certainly isn’t. The right-wing blogosphere has distributed everything about Rev. Wright (and the COLB and Larry Sinclair and cocaine and the Kenyan election violence, etc., etc.) as widely as possible.
At the same time, the left-wing blogosphere has distributed everything about Palin’s pregnancy, troopergate, Cindy McCain’s drug abuse, etc., etc. as widely as possible also.
Like the author has stated, nuggets are 1% of the blogo-sphere. Cut-and-paste reprints make up the other 99%.
Please, David Thomson, cite one example yourself of any “astroturfing” that came directly from the Obama campaign or the DNC (and please show an irrefutable connection the example was planned and created DIRECTLY by the DNC or Obama campaign).
As for McCain smears on the blogo-sphere, most of those were generated by George Bush supporters during the 2000 Republican primaries.
They’re not seeing much light now because even Republicans don’t care about McCain. I feel sorry for him, shoved into the background by his own VP pick.
The upside of blogs:
A lot of really smart people without the normal avenues to making their analyses known outside of their social circles.
The downside of blogs:
A lot, lot more very mediocre, or even below-average, people spewing obvious or inane bromides and insults.
There are a lot of the former, but they usually have little taste for overt political bickering that takes place anywhere from blogs to presidential debates. The problem is that the various classes of people who now inhabit America (I am certainly not using the Marxian notion of class) have such far-flung objective material interests.
A truly united United States of America is something that is crafted by the activity of aligning large majorities into having real, objective common interests. Most of the mindless squabbling you see on blogs is simply due to the fact that America no longer has an ethos, i.e. shared understanding of the world. It’s impossible to have reasonable and substantive discussion when you lack any shared understanding.
You expect objectivity from the blegosphere, while the MSM have just given up on even the pretense of evenhandedness? That is unrealistic. But these are not normal times. Since the onset of the first W. Bush administration (roughly) the Left have radicalized beyond belief. This isn’t the place to discuss it, but there’s good evidence for mass psychopathology. War has been declared. The apotheosis of this has yet to play out. Until such time it is unrealistic to expect anything other than ‘narrative’ from either side. The differences are running very deep, to the point that the battle is on the nature of thought itself (objectivism versus subjectivism). Don’t hold your breath for the voice of reason to be heard yet anywhere for a while.
Mr. Moran, you are entitled to your opinion, even if it is wrong. If you are not aware of what the conservatives have contributed to this campaign, then it is you who is shallow and unobservant. I would say that were it not for conservative blogs, McCain would be down by 5-10 points.
The success of the left wing blogs is attributable to the fact that the Old School media gives them credence. Most of the Palin stories, that appeared in the Old School media, begain on left wing sites.
Stop painting the conservatives with the broad brush of left wing antics. I have seen prescious little from conservatives in the way of rank disgusting, untrue rumors that have been generated on the left.
Try to get out of your bubble and see what is happening in the new world of the internet. Start with Real Clear’s “reader article pages”, you will find that alot of the stories that are being talked about today, were being discussed by conservatives yesterday.
Brian Goettl
I derive mental stimulation, objective brilliance, and profound analysis at the reasoned rantings of Dr. Lumplevin at http://www.lumpsfortheleft.com. He is a bit to the left of William Ayer and Barry Obama, but, then again, so am I.
Absolutely, blogs on the left have had a tremendous influence on their party. A tremendous, terrible, hilarious influence. Just ask Joe Lieberman(I). The nutroots are as steady and reliable as a roving band of chipmunks and they chose a candidate (is there any doubt they chose this candidate?) who would have been a great political pick…in the next election cycle, or the one after.
Blogs on the right may not have anything like the equivalent influence, but at least we haven’t actually hurt our side.
“Was it realistic to expect blogs to do more? ”
No. Neither is it realistic to expect that something like BlogWorld. a convention that one must pay to attend (and in most cases, must pay much more to get to), would feature much attendance by political bloggers — persons who, by and large, don’t make any money from their sites — rather than commercial bloggers and those who sell to them — persons to whom blogging and the cost of attending BlogWorld are investments.
Tired Old Cliche, I have to agree more with with Brian Goettl’s analysis. For every well-trafficked right-leaning blog pushing a bogus or tangential Obama story (cocaine, Muslim, etc.) I am sure I can deliver twice or three-times as much left-leaning traffic to bogus or tangential McCain/Palin posts (angry old man stories, affair allegations, who’s the mother, who’s a secessionist, etc.). Beyond the blogoshpere, though, which group of bogus stories have even been repeated in the MSM? Even when the MSM did a bogus piece on Obama (drug use/dealing?), it was practically at the bequest of Democrat candidate Sen. Clinton.
I will not try to say at this point which side has been more influential, but I will say with utmost confidence that in this election the well-trafficked right-leaning blogosphere has been more important to the process of democracy, providing greater balance and objectivity than even, unfortunately, the “non-partisan” MSM (you know, those guys who were cheering enthusiastically at Sen. Obama’s acceptance speech).
Your reference to Rev. Wright, though, indicates to me that your greater contention is not with fairness or truth but with the valididty of particular issues. There is no doubt in my mind that the story about Sen. Obama attending Rev. Wright’s church and citing him as a spiritual advisor and then examining the sorts of teachings that he espouses is fundamentally different from the McCain/aide affair allegation (that ran in the NYT) and the Palin smears (e.g. she’s not Trig’s mother) in that the facts for the first are irrefutable while they are completely non-existent for the latter two. If you feel that his association with Rev. Wright is not a significant issue, it is your right to do so, but in that case the right-leaning blogosphere worked to shine a light on the truth so you could make an informed decission, while in both of the latter cases the attempt was more to cloud the air with bogus chaff and confuse with misdirection. I really don’t see how they are similar in any way, whatsoever.
Thinking it over, let’s not kid ourselves. There’s a cynical, top-down directed strategy at work that is making use of the hysteria, driving the Left’s hatred machine (see the recent Jawa Report revelations (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/194180.php/). It works twofold:
1. disseminate as much negative information about the opponents as possible, irrespective of the quality – anything will do, otherwise make it up;
2. make it look like it’s in response to something the opponents did (use fake outrage if you have to (O accidentally disclosed this the other day when he accused the McCain camp of using fake outage while it was in fact real anger over the pig, lipstick, and old fish thing, which was not an imagined insult as some will have it).
The postmodern use of moral inversion (blame the victim) and false equivalencing (both sides are guilty so don’t come whining) do the rest. Obviously the author fell for the latter ruse. But accepting the engineered reality (perception) that both are at fault, is to negate the psychological defense mechanism that is driving the hysterical Left: projection.
Don’t for one moment underestimate the cynical professionalism of the smoke and mirrors campaign, which is filled to the brim with mass psychological manipulation.
In general, the right side blogs are undercapitalized, donated labor operations.
The Left side seems have much more money and it shows.
What the Right needs is a Sugar Daddy not named George Soros!
George True;
Your observation that some way to detect and suppress astroturfing made me think of some of the software being employed now by university profs and teachers to detect plagiarism in student essays. To simplify, the package takes samples of the text and does content-searches on the internet. “Hits” are documented, and followed up on.
The same tools could be used to detect multiple cross-posting. It would at least force the ‘turfers’ to vary the wording, though even this can be detected by some of the more sophisticated systems.
Erratum: “Your observation that some way to detect and suppress astroturfing is needed made me …”.
This medium has, indeed, accomplished some important things. It is largely responsible for the demise of the newspaper. Blogs counter the lies and propaganda of the news networks. And, without the blogs and all their warts, Lord Hussein would already be anointed King of World.