Why conservative bloggers have more influence
Right-wing and left-wing partisans alike have blogs they travel to every day for their daily screechifying, such as Instapundit and Daily Kos. But do these sites have any effect? And who's winning the war of ideas -- and producing more real-world influence -- in the blogosphere?
A new report by NDN PAC, a progressive group, has been the first to try and quantify the impact of both conservative and liberal blogs. The results are surprising: They conclude that conservatives had an early headstart, such that in 2003 the right-wing blogosphere was two or three times larger than the liberal one. But by 2005, progressive blog world had erupted in size -- triggered by the 2004 elections -- and is now double the size of the conservative one, in terms of sheer traffic.
Yet NDN concludes that liberal blogs are not necessarily having as big an impact, because of fundamental differences between the way conservatives and liberals use blogs. Liberals may have more traffic, but they have fewer overall blogs. To put it another way, progressives have a small number of enormously-well-read blogs, which conservatives have a large number of blogs with small audiences. That's partly because of how conservatives use them: NDN claims that the right mostly uses blogs as extensions of pre-existing party structures and organizations; they also more often devote blogs to local issues. The upshot is that conservative blogs have a bigger impact on the real world, since they're connected to real-world party structures and are focussed on real-world problems all over the country. As the report writers note:
Pennsylvania offers a useful case study. Philadelphia is arguably the nation's progressive blogging capital. With at least fifteen of the one-hundred and three progressive blogs surveyed by MyDD, not to mention ten of the top fifty most trafficked left wing blogs, one might imagine that local Pennsylvania political blogs are dominated by progressives. Yet, the primary two sites dedicated to Pennsylvania statewide politics were Grassroots PA and Keystone politics, both of which are conservative. Even in a region steeped in popular left wing blogs, conservatives rule the local political blogosphere.
It's a really interesting report -- I've never seen anyone analyse cyberspace this way.
Posted by Clive Thompson at August 24, 2005 12:03 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt3/mt-tb.cgi/1303
Clivebot, I believe I had seen that report (or a similar one) discussed a few months ago. And one of the points made was that the conservative blogs mentioned tended not to enable comments, or had very restrictive commenting policies. Whereas almost all the liberal blogs had comments, mostly freewheeling.
The idea was that this would tend to drive conservatives to create their own blogs to comment, since they had no outlet on the blogs themselves.
I don't read conservative blogs, for the most part (because I don't need the rage headache), so it's hard for me to judge. But this description would fit my experience with online community development.
(BTW, in this context, I am tending to define "conservative" as "people who think 1898 was a model year for the US, and we should devolve back to that level as quickly as possible", as opposed to "liberals", who seem to me to vary between thinking 1964 was a model year, or 1997. I make this definition for your abused Canadian sensibility, by which standard both outlooks are seen as pretty right-wing.)
Posted by: MoXmas at August 24, 2005 1:24 PM
Very interesting link, Clive. I do think Instapundit isn't a good example of a right-wing blog, however-- Glenn Reynolds describes himself as libertarian, rejecting either "right wing" or "conservative" as a label, and is consistently liberal on social issues (abortion rights, gay marriage, etc.), for stem cell research, against "intelligent design" nonsense, and so on. In my opinion, he's not even a particularly energized booster of free market policies, which is where libertarians are supposed to most explicitly unite with conservatives. More key, he rarely if ever engages in the "daily screechifying" which characterize the ideologues on both sides.
Anecdotally, at least, a lot of centrists and liberal hawks (I'd consider myself the latter) whose thinking has been deeply influenced by 9/11 read Glenn-- which probably can't be said of Kos or the other top leftish bloggers.
This analysis would also apply to some of the other top "right wing" bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and to a lesser extent Little Green Footballs-- which is screechifying and has a truly spooky right wing audience in its comments section, but is about 90% devoted to terrorism and Islamic extremism, with little said about anything else that would pin them anywhere on the political spectrum.
Without having read the study you mention, I suspect it doesn't consider the possibility that many "right wing" bloggers are also more influential because they don't simply appeal to that part of the spectrum, and instead attract a broader, more politically eclectic audience.
Posted by: W.J.A at August 25, 2005 8:03 PM
As an addendum, here's an extensive reader survey of folks who read Andrewsullivan.com:
31% of his readers self-identify as conservative, 29% as "Center-right"-- and an astounding 40% classify themselves as independent, moderate, center-left, and liberal. Do you think the explicitly left-leaning blogs have that politically diverse a readership?
Posted by: W.J.A at August 27, 2005 4:07 PM
Posted by: W.J.A at August 27, 2005 4:08 PM
Post a comment
Clivebot, I believe I had seen that report (or a similar one) discussed a few months ago. And one of the points made was that the conservative blogs mentioned tended not to enable comments, or had very restrictive commenting policies. Whereas almost all the liberal blogs had comments, mostly freewheeling.
The idea was that this would tend to drive conservatives to create their own blogs to comment, since they had no outlet on the blogs themselves.
I don't read conservative blogs, for the most part (because I don't need the rage headache), so it's hard for me to judge. But this description would fit my experience with online community development.
(BTW, in this context, I am tending to define "conservative" as "people who think 1898 was a model year for the US, and we should devolve back to that level as quickly as possible", as opposed to "liberals", who seem to me to vary between thinking 1964 was a model year, or 1997. I make this definition for your abused Canadian sensibility, by which standard both outlooks are seen as pretty right-wing.)
Posted by: MoXmas![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 24, 2005 1:24 PM
Very interesting link, Clive. I do think Instapundit isn't a good example of a right-wing blog, however-- Glenn Reynolds describes himself as libertarian, rejecting either "right wing" or "conservative" as a label, and is consistently liberal on social issues (abortion rights, gay marriage, etc.), for stem cell research, against "intelligent design" nonsense, and so on. In my opinion, he's not even a particularly energized booster of free market policies, which is where libertarians are supposed to most explicitly unite with conservatives. More key, he rarely if ever engages in the "daily screechifying" which characterize the ideologues on both sides.
Anecdotally, at least, a lot of centrists and liberal hawks (I'd consider myself the latter) whose thinking has been deeply influenced by 9/11 read Glenn-- which probably can't be said of Kos or the other top leftish bloggers.
This analysis would also apply to some of the other top "right wing" bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and to a lesser extent Little Green Footballs-- which is screechifying and has a truly spooky right wing audience in its comments section, but is about 90% devoted to terrorism and Islamic extremism, with little said about anything else that would pin them anywhere on the political spectrum.
Without having read the study you mention, I suspect it doesn't consider the possibility that many "right wing" bloggers are also more influential because they don't simply appeal to that part of the spectrum, and instead attract a broader, more politically eclectic audience.
Posted by: W.J.A![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 25, 2005 8:03 PM
As an addendum, here's an extensive reader survey of folks who read Andrewsullivan.com:
31% of his readers self-identify as conservative, 29% as "Center-right"-- and an astounding 40% classify themselves as independent, moderate, center-left, and liberal. Do you think the explicitly left-leaning blogs have that politically diverse a readership?
Posted by: W.J.A![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 27, 2005 4:07 PM
Whoops, the link got swallowed, it's:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/DisplaySummary.asp?SID=113268&U=11326886423
Posted by: W.J.A![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 27, 2005 4:08 PM