Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere:
A New Force in American Politics
Chris Bowers and Matthew Stoller
August 10, 2005
Table of Contents
Overview
I. Blogs and Public Life: Background
II. The Right-Wing and Blogs: An Integrated, Top-Down Approach
III . The Left-Wing and Blogs: Building Digital Communities
IV. Early Conservative Dominance
V. The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere
VI. All Blogs Rising
VII. Blog Sprawl
Appendix I: Engaging Bloggers In a Local Campaign
Appendix II: Progressive and Conservative Netroots’ Advantages
Appendix III: Top Progressive Blogs (available only in PDF version)
Appendix IV: Democratic Institutional Blogs (available only in PDF version)
Appendix V: Top Conservative Blogs (available only in PDF version)
References
Since March of 2005, the total number of blogs has grown from 7.8 million to 14.2 million. At this rate, the online universe is doubling in size every five months. (1) This memo is a comprehensive look at the underlying dynamics of these online communities, along with a targeted analysis of how to engage them to generate political power.
There has been a great deal of discussion about Internet activism and blogs over the past few years. Yet, blogs are consistently viewed through the traditional lenses of politics or media, rather than as the communal social phenomenom that they are. Real political power and influence is now being wielded through online communities comprising millions of people. And trends suggest that this is only the beginning. Indeed, what we have seen to date are the outlines of a new politics.
There is an emerging social structure of the Internet which includes key differences in how conservatives and progressives use the web to communicate. For years, conservatives dominated the political Internet, with such websites as FreeRepublic.com, the Drudge Report and Newsmax. Moveon.org was one of a few notable, progressive exceptions to conservatives’ online dominance. Their Internet supremacy was anchored in, and improved on, an already existing conservative infrastructure. On the whole, it reflected the top-down, coherent messaging structure that characterizes the conservative movement.
Since 2002, the Dean campaign and other landmark events have caused a new world of online activism to thrive: the blogosphere. The blogosphere, and in particular the progressive blogosphere, have emerged as powerful political forces. Unlike their conservative counterparts, progressive Internet activists have not relied on an existing set of institutional relationships. They have instead forged a new constituency group, a new set of leaders, and a new forest of social relationships. The strengths and weaknesses of each blogosphere are reflected in their origins. Understanding these blogospheres and how to interface with them effectively is critical to succeeding in 21st century politics.
This memo offers basic background on political blogs, and strategic recommendations for effectively channeling their growing influence. It has been written by bloggers for use by the progressive political community and is grounded in the available data and first-hand political experience.
Our examination begins with a basic overview of the politics of blogging, with particular focus on the strategies and cultures of the conservative and progressive blogospheres. It proceeds to trace the evolution of the blogosphere, and explore important trends in the online political world.
Bloggers do not reside at the political fringes, and defy easy characterization as “progressive” or “conservative.” They run the full gamut of ideologies, but are united by their shared commitment to active engagement in local, state and national politics. That is why the blogosphere holds such potential for those campaigns and individuals who are prepared to engage with it appropriately.
It is with this potential firmly in mind, that we conclude with a toolkit for those interested in more effectively engaging with online political communities. It includes (1) suggestions for involving blogs and bloggers in local and statewide political campaigns (2) a strategic overview of the comparative advantages of the progressive and conservative online political communities and (3), a detailed listing of the top 100 progressive blogs.
Chris Bowers lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He started blogging for MyDD.com and Swingstateproject.com in April 2004. He also works as a political consultant on Labor / Internet matters. He has worked for the American Federation of Teachers, and spent six years teaching and as a graduate student in English at Temple University, from where he has a Master’s degree and is working on his Ph.D. He is also a member of the board for BlogPac.org.
Matt Stoller has blogged since 2002. He co-created the media project Blogging of the President (www.bopnews.com) with Christopher Lydon and Jay Rosen, as well as the anti-Social Security privatization web site www.thereisnocrisis.com, done through Blogpac. He has consulted for numerous groups, including MSNBC and NDN. Matt is an advisor to Actblue.com.
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I. Blogs and Public Life: Background
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The Internet has come to play an increasing role in political discourse and organizing. According to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 33% of Americans have looked for political information online, and 15% of Americans have read someone's blog. Clearly, the 'netroots' will play a major role in providing money, support, organizing and media exposure in the 2008 presidential contest.
Data from the annual Blogads reader survey, suggest that regular bloggers tend to be young, wealthy, male and progressive/independent.(2) They are also extremely politically active. In recent years, their growing influence has been widely felt.
Recent progressive netroots successes include StopBolton, a campaign directed over the Internet to defeat John Bolton's nomination, and AfterDowningStreet, the campaign to put the Downing Street Memo into mainstream American media. Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com played a crucial role in the drive to defeat the President’s social security plan. In addition, the Frist filibuster at Princeton, a little noticed affair that became a New York Times story, suggests the tantalizing possibilities of combining blogs and organizing. This August, the Paul Hackett campaign nearly pulled off an extraordinary upset victory in Ohio’s 2 nd Congressional district. Blogs raised between three and four hundred thousand dollars for that race, bypassing the major party committees. Currently, blogs are playing a critical role in messaging surrounding the Rove Affair, the war in Iraq, and Tom Delay (see www.dumpmike.com, a blog aiming to use Tom Delay to topple Rep. Mike Ferguson – NJ).
On the right, blogs created major messaging problems for Democratic Senator Tom Daschle, chummed the Swift Boat for Veteran story, led to the firing Eason Jordan at CNN, and of course, led the charge against Dan Rather.
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II. The Right-Wing and Blogs: An Integrated, Top-Down Approach
Conservatives use the same tactics on blogs that they do in mainstream politics – attack the media and attack progressives. The right wing tends not to build independent online communities, using their existing offline communities to generate web sites that reinforce their politics and their ideology.
Their web presence is nurtured by institutions and is part of the conservative, right-wing media machine. The Drudge Report, for instance, is one of the largest conservative sites and frequently receives its information from Republican operatives.
Most right-wing blogs reiterate talking points that are generated from inside formal conservative institutions; conversations center on feeling victimized for being right-wing, attacking and hating progressives, and attacking and hating the media.
The political successes of this community have been largely founded in manipulating media coverage. The two clearest examples are the John Thune bloggers in South Dakota, and the Dan Rather scandal.
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III . The Left-Wing and Blogs: Building Digital Communities
Progressive blogs build communities of activists and generate new political activity online. Blogs and online organizations offer forums where people can actively engage in progressive politics - real involvement from people talking about politics, policy, organizing, their lives, etc. The degree to which progressive blogs encourage active engagement in political dialogue has fueled their rapid growth over the past several years.
The single most important difference between the blogospheres is this: the progressive blogosphere is introducing new actors into the political scene. The right-wing blogosphere is facilitating further organization of what was already a fairly coherent political world.
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IV. Early Conservative Dominance
When the first coherent study of the blogosphere was conducted in July of 2003, it revealed two important trends in the online political landscape.
- Blog traffic was highly concentrated in a small number of top-tier blogs. In a ranking of the top 100 blogs by total traffic, blogs #7-100 combined had approximately the same number of page views as the top six.
- Conservative bloggers vastly outpaced of progressives in terms of total traffic. The top ranked blog, an influential conservative site known as Instapundit, had as much traffic as the next five sites combined.
Although it is difficult to fully quantify these two trends, various studies suggest that as of 2003, the conservative blogosphere was between two and three times as large as the progressive blogosphere, and held a commanding lead in terms of overall traffic.
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V. The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere
In the past two years, the political dynamics of the Internet have reversed themselves. According to research conducted by MyDD.com, as of July, 2005, the ninety-eight most trafficked progressive blogs totaled an amazing 15,181,649 page views per week, an average of over two million daily page views.(3) That is over five times the size of the entire political blogosphere just two years ago.
By way of comparison, the top one-hundred and fifty conservative blogs had less than ten million page views per week during this period, and just over one million unique visits a day. In less than two years the progressive blogosphere had grown from less than as big as the conservative blogosphere, to nearly double its size.
Nowhere is this rise more apparent than in a direct comparison of the largest progressive and conservative sites. As previously discussed, two years ago, Instapundit was three times larger than any other blog. However, as of July, 2005, the largest progressive blog, Dailykos, received more than four times as many montly visits.
It’s important to remember that Instapundit is still growing. Over the last two years, it has almost doubled the size of its audience. However, over the same period, Dailykos, now easily the largest political blog in the world, has increased its audience nearly thirty-times over.
Other aspects of the digital political world reflect the same trends. The prominent message boards Free Republic (conservative) and Democratic Underground (progressive) are two of the largest online political centers. While Free Republic has been long understood to be the largest political community on the web, over the past two years, Democratic Underground has almost entirely closed the traffic difference with its conservative rival.
Progressives were not the early adapters to online communication. But they have become, in the parlance of Malcolm Gladwell, “The Early Majority.” (4)
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It is crucial to note, that the rapid growth of online political communities is not confined to the progressive blogosphere. On the contrary, over the past two years, the traffic on the top 1,000 political blogs – both progressive and conservative – has risen from 500,000 unique visits per day to over 3,000,000. While these visits remain clustered at the most popular blogs, 409 blogs have more than 1,000 unique visits per day, as compared to fifty-one two years ago. (5)
Progressive online communities are increasing their audience share at a much faster rate than the conservative blogosphere. It should be noted, though, that conservative blogs are neither stagnating nor declining in size, and it will require continued improvements of the progressive blogosphere to maintain the current advantage in size and growth rate. This will require building a competitive, structural advantage for progressive blogs in terms of free media, software upgrades and funding.
It is worth emphasizing that the bulk of online traffic in both the conservative and progressive blogospheres goes to a very small number of blogs. According to a recent MyDD study 54.6% of conservative traffic and 69% of progressive traffic went to the top ten blogs representing their respective ideologies.
Clearly, blogging is a world with a handful of haves, and a nearly uncountable number of have-nots. There are likely a few hundred thousand blogs in this country that talk about politics, but less than one-tenth of one percent of them account for more than 99% of all political blogging traffic.
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What is concerning about the current distribution of traffic is that the smaller conservative blogs are much more numerous than the smaller progressive blogs. A MyDD analysis showed that while progressives have an edge in overall traffic, there are more conservative blogs in the top 250 political blogs.
Among the top forty blogs, progressives maintain a decided advantage – twenty-four to sixteen. However, among the next 210 blogs, conservatives hold a whopping 133 to 77 advantage.
This is significant since the smaller a blog is, the more locally focused it tends to be. An edge among small, local, political blogs also means an edge in small, local, political races. While progressives may have a marked advantage in overall blogosphere discourse, it could also be argued that conservatives are taking a decisive lead in the sort of targeted blogging that will provide them with real, tangible benefits in the 2005-2006 elections and beyond.
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.
To a certain extent, this is likely the result of several large progressive blogs offering quick and easy ways to take part in large communities, a phenomenon that is not found nearly as often in the conservative online world. Whatever the cause, though, this is a serious problem that progressives must confront. If they do not invest time, energy and resources building a local blog infrastructure superior to that currently possessed by conservatives, the comparative advantage of progressives’ overall traffic lead will be significantly reduced.
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Appendix I: Engaging Bloggers In a Local Campaign
The power of a single blog is relatively small – it is the interlinking of blogs into a larger ‘blogosphere’ that is meaningful. To harness this power and use it to drive message, money and activism, you must invest in organizing this constituency. One cannot e-mail large national bloggers and expect their attention on local candidates or issues. Instead, you need to create your own blogosphere out of existing small and locally focused blogs, and invest time interacting with local online communities. This structure will in the end be of much more use to you. It is important to remember at all times that bloggers are both campaign activists, and a sort of journalist. They can be your friends, but are also third-party observers of your campaign. Here are some tips on interacting with these unique communities:
- Hire a ‘Netroots Coordinator’ and be prepared to work with him or her on money, messaging and organizing. Most organizations hire one and relegate them to a position where they are asked simply to raise money. If you follow this model it is not worth engaging the blogs. A good Netroots Coordinator can deliver messaging, media, and money.
- Put up a link on your web site that says ‘Got a blog?’ Ask for bloggers to give you their name, email, IM, and blog address. This list is valuable – it is the list of bloggers who are interested in your issue.
- Take your list of bloggers and add them to your press release list. Call through to introduce yourself, and invite them to cover events, and if possible give them press passes and access.
- Read the blogs who sign up. If you use an ‘aggregator’ such as www.bloglines.com, you can read many more blogs much more quickly. Get a sense of who is on your side and who is not. Go into the comment section of various blogs and add comments when relevant.
- Hold conference calls with your strategists/candidate. Treat bloggers like friends and allies, but also realize you are on the record.
- Periodically do a ‘blog round-up’ where you email interesting blog posts on your issue to all the bloggers as well as internally.
- Link to interesting blog posts from your web site/blog; make sure you link to a few posts that disagree with you. This will lend your online presence more credibility.
- Listen and respond to criticism. These are your friends and often not that experienced in politics – treat them like they are here to learn, not like they are cynical, hard-boiled reporters.
Appendix II: Progressive and Conservative Netroots’ Advantages
Progressive Advantages:
1) Website investment. Progressive bloggers have been extremely innovative in developing and implementing website software that produces more flexible, interactive, attractive and powerful websites from which to run their blogs.
2) Intra-blog communities . Progressive blogs allow for greater interactivity with bloggers in their websites, including more comments, diaries, polls, requests for feedback, and chatting features that allow for the creation of communities within individual blogs.
3) Partisan. Progressive blogs are far more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than conservative bloggers are to identify with the Republican Party. This leads to greater contact between progressive bloggers and the Democratic Party than conservative bloggers have with the Republican Party. It also means more influence.
4) Activist. By every measure of political activism, progressive blog readers and bloggers are more politically active than their conservative counterparts. Progressive bloggers also engage in far more direct electoral activism than conservative bloggers, who engage in almost none.
5) Meritocracy . New progressive blogs are more likely to become “A-list” blogs than are new conservative blogs. Half of the highest trafficked progressive blogs were founded within the last sixteen months—eight of the ten most trafficked conservative blogs are over three years old. Also, the “recommended diary” feature on many progressive blogs allows the community to decide what posts receive more attention, rather than just the site managers.
Conservative Advantages:
1) Local focus. Conservative blogs are more likely to take a local focus than progressive blogs, and to create strong, local blog rings.
2) Integration with Republican message machine. Republican blogs are better able to influence stories in the mainstream media due to their near total integration with existing forms of conservative, alternative media and the Republican Noise Machine in general.
3) Inter-blog communities. Conservative blogs have a tendency to link to discussions on other blogs more often than progressive blogs.
4) Free media. Despite their smaller size, conservative blogs receive far more praise from established media outlets than their progressive counterparts. This includes more interviews and more airtime on “inside the blogs” segments. This is almost certainly related to their integration with the Republican Noise Machine.
References
1. The complete study is available at http://www.technorati.com/weblog/
2. While it relies on a self-selected pool of respondents, the annual blogads (http://www.blogads.com/survey/2005_blog_reader_survey.html) survey garners more than 30,000 responses annually.
3. More information available at www.mydd.com.
4. See Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: Little, Brown and Company; New York, 2000
5. Statistics courtesy of www.truthlaidbear.com
