Comments on: Open call

By: fyreflye

fyreflye — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 03:12:13 +0000

As liberal bloggers proved last year, blogs can raise lots of money for selected candidates at election time.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 23:38:01 +0000

In addition to the excellent points made by FMguru, don't forget Google power. For a great current example of the issue, take a look at my post on: Juan Cole and Google-NEWS-bombing http://www.sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/000792.html

By: Mrs Tilton

Mrs Tilton — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 23:34:27 +0000

As Myles na gCopaleen wrote of Joyce and the title of his most obscure work: ‘That poor writer’s end was hastened by that same intrusive apostrophe’. Finnegan and Jeremy of the Wake, at least, are not beating the poor dead horse.

By: FMguru

FMguru — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 23:00:19 +0000

“but it isn’t immediately obvious to me how this would help a movement.”

1) A big boost in right-wing blogs gives the righties a nice set of talking points when discussing blogs with the greater media. If right-wing blogs increase by 300% in the next six months, while liberal ones only go up by 80%, look for a whole bunch of articles about the right-wingification of the blogosphere, how consrvatives are using blogs to get around the leftist MSM, and how the MSM needs to tilt even further right if it hopes to be relevant. Same old, same old, but with new ammunition.

2) Blogs are ad supported, so the more people blogging and linking to one another, the more money it generates for the upper-tier right-wing blogs, which lets them be more efficient.

3) The echo-chamber-feedback effect can, itself, be pretty strong, as anyone who watched the Schiavo case play out (or who watches the crazies hype each other up on places like FreeRepublic) can attest. Who cares if the new blogs are recycled RNC talking points and faux-outrages? It gets a bunch of wingers mobilized and repeating the same nonsense back and forth. Perfect, as far as movement leaders are concerned.