The Relative Power of Conservative and Liberal Blogs

JB

Huh? How long, precisely is this "long" of which they speak? Here's a New York Times story from two years ago entitled "Conservative Blogs Are More Effective" making exactly the opposite claim. (I remember this story because I was interviewed for it.)

Mr. Fertik [of Democrats.com] maintains that the blurring of boundaries [between blogging and older media] has benefited left-wing bloggers less than their adversaries on the right, saying that reports posted on conservative blogs more easily make the jump to the main news media. "The way we perceive it," he said, "is that right-wing bloggers are able to invent stories, get them out on Drudge, get them on Rush Limbaugh, get them on Fox, and pretty soon that spills over into the mainstream media. We, the progressives, we don't have that kind of network to work with."

Some on the right disagree, arguing that the news reported by traditional media is tainted by liberal bias. "We learned years ago that the mainstream media just weren't going to pay attention to us," said Kristinn Taylor of the Web site FreeRepublic.com.

But bloggers on all sides agree that the left has made less effective use of the opportunities to organize and wield influence afforded by the Internet. The reasons, though, are more complex than they might appear. "It's not just a story about the blogosphere," said Jack M. Balkin, a professor and director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. "It's a story about the conservative social networks of which the blogosphere is a part. The important thing is the network - and I mean the social network."

The early blogosphere on the right was not really oppositional to American politics even though its rhetoric often sounded that way. That was because conservatives were ascendant in other areas of politics and media during this period. The right wing blogosphere built on existing conservative political strengths and networks and eventually bloggers learned how to help other conservatives coordinate messages and ideas.

That said, the conservative blogosphere was hardly monolithic. Many early conservative bloggers were upset with the Clintons and all they stood for, others were libertarian conservatives attracted by the new technology, still other conservatives turned to the blogosphere because of September 11th and the run up to the Iraq war. Lots of different types of conservatives got to the blogosphere early on and made important and effective use of it. This produced a synergy with other important conservative media organs, including talk radio and Fox News. It also helped that the Republican Party controlled all three branches of government as a result of the 2000 election, and that the United States was attacked on September 11th, 2001. Existing social networks amplified the power of the blogosphere on the right and the usefulness of the blogosphere to the right. Thus, despite the oppositional tone of its rhetoric, it is a mistake to see the right wing blogosphere as oppositional to existing politics. It worked with the dominant forces in American political life-- which were by and large conservative-- far more than it worked against them.

During much of this period, liberals were thrown back on the defensive. The blogosphere became very important to the left for precisely the opposite of the reasons it became important to the right. Liberals had lost social movement energies long ago. All the branches of government were arrayed against them; in their eyes, the mass media was increasingly following a conservative line or was being pushed into utter docility and irrelevance by a powerful collection of conservative networks and politically masterful Republican strategists who-- at least in those days-- seemed all but invincible. From the perspective of the left, September 11th seemed to turn the dominant discourse in American politics ever more into mindless demagoguery and liberal-baiting.

If the blogosphere was a way to connect to existing social and political networks and create synergies for the right, it was a way to break through the noise and find other like-minded individuals for the left. That is to say, the left found and employed the blogosphere differently in part because its social and political situation was different. Gradually, liberals used the Internet to form their own social networks and regain social movement energy. Liberal websites (not all of them blogs) helped create community and provided sounding boards for liberal ideas. They offered liberal counterweights to the conservative versions of current events emanating from conservative parts of the media. And the liberal Netroots-- however much it may upset mainstream politicians and traditional media types-- has been a crucially important feature in the resurgence of liberal political opposition and liberal political ideas.

After the 2006 elections and the collapse of the credibility of the Bush Administration, it may now seem to the reporters for the Wall Street Journal that the left seems more powerful on the blogosphere than the right. But it wasn't always so. Indeed, much of this resurgence is only the product of the past three years. Remember, the blogosphere is very, very young.

What is the moral of this story? The moral is not to ask whether liberals or conservatives are currently doing "better" on the blogosphere. The answer to *that* question will surely change over time.

Rather, the key thing to focus on is how the blogosphere can be used by people of different views in different ways. The blogosphere can serve as a counterweight to what its participants see as the dominant forces in American political life. That is a familiar romantic narrative of the blogosphere. But it can also work with the dominant forces in American political life and create synergies with existing networks of power and older forms of mass media. Indeed, it does this remarkably well, as conservative bloggers learned, and as liberal bloggers are now learning.

Blogs and the blogosphere do two things simultaneously. They allow people to talk back to others, and they allow people to form communities of like minded people. They are both oppositional and communitarian, divisive and connecting. These two features may seem at odds but they are actually two sides of the same coin. The structure of the Web-- its culture of linking and interactivity-- makes both features possible.