Do Blogs Even Matter?

I'm not normally one to have much patience with bloggers going on and on about blogging. But Kos the other day had this interesting analysis from Peter Daou, looking at the limitations of bloggers' influence:

Simply put, without the participation of the media and the political
establishment, the netroots alone cannot generate the critical mass necessary to alter or create conventional wisdom. This is partly a factor of audience size, but it's also a matter, frankly, of trust and legitimacy. Despite the astronomical growth of the netroots (see Bowers and Stoller for hard numbers), and the slow and steady encroachment of bloggers on the hallowed turf of Washington's opinion-makers, it is still the Russerts and Broders and Gergens and Finemans, the WSJ, WaPo and NYT editorial pages, the cable nets, Stewart and Letterman and Leno, and senior elected officials, who play a pivotal role in shaping people's political views. That is not to say that blogs can't be the first to draw attention to an issue, as they often do, but the half-life of an online buzz can be measured in days and weeks, and even when a story has enough netroots momentum to float around for months, it will have little effect on the wider public discourse without the other sides of the triangle in place. Witness the Plame case, an obsession of left-leaning bloggers long before the media and the political establishment got on board and turned it into a political liability for Rove and Bush...

The triangle construct also explains rightwing bloggers' relentless attacks on the "MSM" and on anyone who contends that the media is conservative. In a nation dominated by shrill rightwing voices, with all branches of government in the hands of Republicans, and an ineffectual press corps, the "liberal media" myth is so absurd that it requires no rebuttal. But the right desperately needs to keep the media from doing what they did in the aftermath of Katrina: tell the unvarnished truth. They need to block the left from building the kind of triangle that Katrina generated, where outspoken left-leaning bloggers are joined by leading Democrats and reporters who have no choice but to describe the catastrophic results of Bush's dismal leadership. The result in Katrina's case is a major political crisis and a dramatic shift in public perceptions, a body blow to the long-standing conventional wisdom of Bush as a "resolute leader" and a protector.

Whereas rightwing bloggers can rely on their leadership and the rightwing noise machine to build the triangle, left-leaning bloggers face the challenge of a mass media consumed by the shop-worn narrative of Bush the popular, plain-spoken leader, and a Democratic Party incapacitated (for the most part) by the focus-grouped fear of turning off "swing voters" by attacking Bush. For the progressive netroots, the past half-decade has been a Sisyphean loop of scandal after scandal melting away as the media and party establishment remain disengaged.

It would seem reasonable to conclude, then, that the best strategy for the progressive netroots is to go after the media and Democratic Party leaders and spend less time and energy attacking the Bush administration. If the netroots alone can't change the political landscape without the participation of the media and Democratic establishment, then there's no point wasting precious online space blasting away at Republicans while the other sides of the triangle stand idly by. Indeed, blog powerhouses like Kos and Josh Marshall have taken an aggressive stance toward Democratic politicians they see as selling out core Democratic Party principles. Kos's willingness to attack the DLC is mocked on the right, but it is precisely the right's fear that Kos will "close the triangle" that causes them to protest so loudly. Similarly, when Atrios, Digby, Oliver Willis, and so many other progressive bloggers attack the media, they are leveraging whatever power they have to compel the media to assume a role as the third side of their triangle.

I can't agree that it's a good idea for the anti-Bush "left" (I hate being labelled like that) to devour each other instead of going after the real criminals. But the idea of a blog-media-politics triangle is something that will stay in my mind. It's really frustrating screaming my ass off here every day for three years or more and feeling that it is having little or no impact in the real world. And yet, I don't think anyone can deny that the "leftist" blogs have had a profound impact on politics (in the USA at least) since Bush came to power. I'm sure that many voices in the media get at least some of their information from blogs these days. Sometimes they acknowledge the blogs as a source, other times they make the whole story about the blogs (as if to say that they themselves do not advocate the "conspiracy theories" being reported). Other times they probably just "steal" the info.

Josh Marshall and Juan Cole are two fine examples of outstanding blogs which have frequently broken through to mainstream media. But beyond that, I do believe there is a far more subtle form of osmosis going on, filtering news and views from myriad smaller blogs like this one through to the mainstream media and/or politics. Think of it as part of the "change the world one person at a time" concept. This blog has just registered over 40,000 hits (hooray!) and a LOT of them have come from people doing Google or Yahoo searches for more information on older stories. Most of those people are ordinary Joes (or Janes) whose pro-Bush opinions are being slowly changed (as polls prove) by access to the real facts behind the TV soundbites. And a few of those people, I strongly suspect, would be journalists of one form or another.

Beyond that, you can be quite sure that pollsters and political spin-meisters like Karl Rove keep one eye on blog data like the Technorati Top Ten as a sign of what is to come (either in the mainstream media, or in their political constituencies). Bloggers are often a few days (if not weeks) ahead of the media. On our own, shitty little blogs like this one may not be able to achieve much. But as a social movement, and as a still-evolving technical mouthpiece for ordinary citizens, we can justifiably demand - and get - attention.

Now on to the next story!