Hat tip to PolInt for noting this excellent article from something called the “Boston Review.” It’s by Henry Farrell, an assistant professor at George Washington University and blogger at Crooked Timber.
You should read the whole thing. Some highlights:
The netrootsan Internet grass roots that has set out to change the Democratic Partyare often maligned. These progressive bloggers and their readers, who emerged as an influential group during Howard Deans presidential campaign, are increasingly depicted as a sinister movement under the dictatorial control of Markos Kos Moulitsas Zúniga, the founder of the prominent political blog Daily Kos…. These claims are hysterical to the point of near-incoherence. Theyre also wrong. The netroots are becoming a power in the Democratic Party, but they arent under the control of any one person or clique. And while many netroots bloggers describe themselves as progressive, they are generally not leftists in the conventional sense…. If they are united by anything, it is their harsh criticism of the Republican Party, their shared anger at the Democratic Partys failures, and their rough analysis of how it could do better.
What [the netroots] are is an example of how the Internet can foster new ways of conducting argument and building social cooperation among diverse groups and individuals. In other words, they are the harbinger of structural changes in the relationship between technology and politics…. This has important implications for political parties in general and for the Democratic Party in particular. In the past, much of the political agenda has been set by elitessenior party officials, elected representatives, and a congeries of policy wonks and public intellectuals stationed in think tanks, universities, issue groups, and political journals. While activists have played an important role in politics, especially in the Republican Party, they have usually taken their cues from well-connected leaders such as Grover Norquist and (before recent scandals) Ralph Reed. This is changing. Elites are losing some of their agenda-setting power as a much wider set of actors begins to influence the terms of public argument. A sea change is taking place in American politics. Debates that used to be the preserve of a small, self-perpetuating group of pundits, pollsters, and policymakers are now being opened up to a much wider group.
Debates in the blogosphere arent disinterested academic discourse, or anything like it. Serious arguments are mixed together with ad hominem attacks, insults, and irrelevancies. But political blogs are not meant to be a substitute for either journalism or academic debate. They are something new: a widely dispersed set of interlinked arguments about politics that responds with extraordinary rapidity to new events.
Exactly because the blogosphere involves clashes between strongly divergent opinions, it is beginning to affect other spheres of political debate. The blogosphere serves as a crucible in which politically useful and interesting interpretations of important issues are forged and tested. Bloggers ability to take up a new political issue, toss different interpretations back and forth among themselves, point out flaws, and arrive at final viewpoints makes them a highly valuable resource for political professionals and commentators in search of novel and salient ways of framing issues. Its unsurprising that survey evidence suggests that a disproportionate number of journalists and politicians are regular blog readers.
Indeed, blogs not only influence traditional channels of political commentary; they are beginning to displace them. Major newspapers, political journals, and think tanks are no longer the only important venues for the expression of political arguments. Non-traditional elites have a realistic chance of making their viewpoints heard; while many politicians and opinion-makers have begun to blog, they have to rub shoulders with commentators whose claim to influence isnt their social position but their ability to express vigorous opinions in clear, everyday language.
Critics claim that the result is a vulgarization of political debate. In a certain sense, theyre exactly right. Blogs help open up argument to the profanum vulgus, the unhallowed crowd that Horace and his peers in imperial Rome disliked so much. Indeed, much of the nastiness of anti-blog rhetoric is the result of snobbery and fear…. Blogs open up debate to a very large group of people who otherwise wouldnt have a chance to make their voices heard. Its not at all surprising that those occupying privileged positions in the current hierarchy of opinion feel threatened by them.
Seriously, go read it.
Yes, that is a good article.
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I definitely think the main difficulty some people have with blogs is that they don’t fit into any of the traditional categories. It is not truly journalism, it’s not truly academic debate, and it’s not truly debate amongst political pundits. It’s a new angle in political discussion, and people who try to stuff it into a old box by comparing it to other ways to dicuss politics (journalism, academics, etc.) are missing the point, and this can often lead to unwarranted criticism of blogs.
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If I had any (warranted?) criticism of blogs at all, it is that some prominent bloggers sometimes engage in a sort of “blog triumphalism”, making the mistake of claiming that somehow blogs are the “new medium” that makes everything else obsolete. Blogs are great, but they work in tandum with the other ways of discussing politics, filling a gap that hasn’t really been afforded a place in the political discourse as of yet.
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All of which is to say — this article is pretty much right on.
And that is the fundamental flaw of the article. Similarly, there is no “phone banking”-roots, and no “direct mail”-roots. If one wants to talk about pro-Democratic websites that have emerged in the past few years and commonalities they may have, the article makes its points well with respect to that specific group. But I think the basic argument is distorted and thus fundamentally confuses rather than clarifies.
Direct mail is a total one-way conversation. Phone banking is a bit less so, but it’s by and large not a forum for sustained discussion of issues, but rather a tool to get out the vote. And both of them work for and are paid for by a specific candidate or party.
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Blogging strikes me as a different enterprise — and the very subgroup that you describe, “pro-Democratic websites that have emerged in the past few years and commonalities they may have,” seems to me a decent description of who the “netroots” are, if your description is assumed to include not only the operators of the websites but also the sites’ readers and contributors. What’s wrong with talking about that subgroup and the impact it has on the party and on elections?
Two things really stick out for me about the “Left Blogosphere”.
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This passage from the article surprised me:
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Final viewpoints? More like political mud-wrestling for wordsmiths.
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I see a lot of debate, but I can’t imagine that the blogosphere is producing consensus. People may discover new ways of thinking about formerly-unexamined assumptions (e.g., Lieberman is not a good Dem), but it makes me chuckle that anyone would portray Daily Kos, BMG or any other political blog as a place where people come to forge single-minded agreement.
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I agree with your point that there is a “gathering place” for ideas, and a way to learn about far-flung political activity. Maybe that’s what you mean about consensus.
Good article. Yes the vulgar participation–it’s real. The net has provided a way for many more people to participate in the conversation. This is all for the best. There is a very exciting discussion going on right now on dkos about starting a project where readers/commenters will choose one Congressional committee or subcommittee to pay attention to and that way among the group, hopefully there will be “eyes” on the Congress from everywhere. There is already a wiki page started to serve as a focal point for all this discussion and information. It is very exciting to see the “blogosphere” going in that direction (among so many other directions simultaneously). If the Democratically led Congress was elected to keep an eye on the Bush administration, the “netroots” will keep an eye on Congress.