Netroots?

It seems that every five minutes a blogger posts a comparison of the "blogging revolution" to Gutenberg and the onset of the Reformation. Political talking heads ponder the power of the "netroots" in the past candidacy of presidential aspirant Howard Dean and in the present candidacy of U.S. Senate nominee Ned Lamont (D-Conn.). Some churches and denominations now wonder about the "new reality" of the blogosphere in tones that sound almost revolutionary.

The Weekly Standard wonders whether all this is really accurate. Exhibit A is the movie Snakes on a Plane, an Internet-hyped phenomenon that has flopped at the box office. The Standard argues that this shouldn't surprise us since the "power" of the "netroots" is overblown anyway. As the article puts it:

The problem is that most people, both insiders and outsiders, misunderstand the internet's advantages and limitations.

It's perfectly understandable when political junkies and box office watchers conclude that web buzz augurs big things, but it's also perfectly backwards. We look at the humming activity of the blogosphere and assume the cadre of online enthusiasts behind it constitutes the tip of an off-line iceberg. It is assumed that for every posting on MyDD, or SoaP rap on YouTube, there must be dozens of people out there itching for impeachment of python gags.

Reality is just the opposite. People go to the blogosphere because they can't find a sizable number of people in their everyday, off-line lives that are as enthusiastic as they are. The blogosphere gathers together atypical fans and brings them together in what quickly becomes a broadband echo chamber. The louder and more intense the online community gets, the farther it's likely drifting from what is happening offline.

Comments

[Stephen Golay]

Then there is the question - has the blogsphere arrived (as with mainstream media (MSM)) where we are able to identify mainstream blogs (MSB)?

[Ethan Cordray]

That seems fairly accurate to me. The value of the internet and of blogs particularly is in the ease of mass communication. This new quick, simple, and cheap communication ability alters the statistical relationship between opinions held and opinions expressed. It used to be, for every one person who was willing to write a letter to the editor, there were likely many who wanted to but didn't have the time/typewriter/postage to do so. Now, anyone can post up a blog entry for free, that is, for only the cost of the time it takes to write it. This, incidentally, is why blog entries tend to be so short and terse. When composition time is the only remaining cost, the writing quickly and briefly is the only form of economic cost saving. But anyone can dash off a sentence or two in a forum about (say) "Snakes on a Plane" or how much the like Howard Dean without making a major investment of time and money. Thus each individual post represents less of a valuation of the object in the eyes of the poster than earlier more expensive communication techniques, as well as less of an implicit number of silent people who value the subject but haven't paid the cost to communicate.

The same thing, of course, works for readers. I'm more likely to read a Wikipedia article on some obscure topic (say, Aztec religion) than I am to go get a book from the library on the subject, especially if only have a very passing interest in it (like if I want one word to use in a blog comment). Thus the seeming preponderance of esoteric or "fan oriented" material on the internet doesn't necessarily represent a coarsening of American tastes as much as it simply is a consequence of the sort of material that most enjoys a greater comparative advantage in the medium.

[DGP]

I'd argue that one consequence of all this is the exact opposite of Mr. Golay's conclusion: Though some blogs may grown in prominence, the larger trend is for mainstream status itself to degenerate. The technology of broadcast media once required a natural oligarchy, now collapsing into a buyer's market. Consumers instinctively segregate themselves according to their taste in media, in a manner analogous to the formation of social enclaves discussed in Bellah, et al., *Habits of the Heart.*