A Quick Further Thought on the Echo Chamber
After writing one long piece on that NPI report on the left-wing blogosphere, one more thought sprung forth on its peculiar myopia. The report says of right-wing blogs:
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.
(emphasis omitted) This is myopia bordering upon the asinine. The authors of the report (one a blogger of MyDD.com) are ignoring the fact that both the left- and right-wing blogosphere is mostly made up of individuals writing their own stories. The Scoop-style sites (Kos, MyDD, TPMCafe) aggregate these in one site, while others are connected through blogrolls, RSS, or just links. Both sides of the debate are building communities, but they're using different methods.
Take the Dan Rather controversy that the authors so deride. Whatever one thinks of Instapundit, the players brought into the game by blogs weren't limited to "nodes" like Prof. Reynolds. Instead they included handwriting experts, computer specialists, and all sorts of other authors who prior to this only had a forum if a journalist or someone with access to the media chose to speak to them.
The trouble with the NPI report is that it's focusing on the top end of the blogosphere, as they define it. The interesting thing about the blogosphere is that even with the kind of Kos/Reynolds concentration in a few sites, there's still a lot of vitality in the small players. Not all the life of the network is in the nodes.
