Helen Helen

It's interesting that the Guardian article comments on the apparent lack of blog activity amongst anti-war activists, or indeed activists of any kind, with the hardcore blogging community composed of media and policy types instead. My own sense is that activists prefer the email as their medium of choice. I'm subscribed to the UK Feminist Action email list (find them on yahoogroups) and the level of focused activity is asotunding. This week we've been co-ordinating letters of complaint to The Sun to protest against the rag's pathetic behaviour towards Claire Short and her comments about Page 3.

So here's a thesis then. Aimless intellectuals free of any particular set of political convictions like to demonstrate their prowess in hunting down web resources weird and wonderful through the medium of blog, whilst activists with a cause to fight move straight for the inbox. Go on, knock it down. You know you want to...

jackdalton jackdalton

Is 'real' blogging simply about demonstrating 'weird and wonderful' trophies? Or is activism simply reactionary?
I'd have thought that many activists use blogs to prompt and develop lines of thought as well as to communicate positions and views. Obvious examples would include people like danah boyd [http://www.danah.org/]. But even if you look at less well-known blogs like slugger o'toole [http://www.sluggerotoole.com/] or karlin lillington [http://www.techno-culture.com/] or thinking women [http://thinkingwomen.blogspot.com/] or even samizdata [http://www.samizdata.net/blog/] -- it would (perhaps?) be just that little bit difficult to sustain your thesis about lack of political conviction. Even if they are mostly new media types. Though being a journalist or a comentator doesn't totally preclude being an activist does it?

As for the 'aimless intellectual' comment... hmmmm. Maybe I'd better leave that to the iWire in leotards crew...

Will Davies

Yes, I probably deserve it.

err... well there's no doubt that blogging creates a very low attention span culture, which is not so helpful when you're campaigning for something which takes generations to complete. If we accept that social software (and mobiles) make possible a new "just-in-time" model of association, demonstrated in a futile way by flashmobs, then the very casualness of this association is also likely to limit it's usefulness over the long term.

But I think the medium just has to be correctly understood. The clustering effects that blogs make possible are capable of drawing out hidden shared agendas. The Trent Lott example was basically that: lots of individuals separately were appalled by him, and something (I guess) emergent happened. It actually *lengthened* the standard media attention span, rather than shortened it.

Or look at this http://robertcorr.net/unionlabel/ - the content of a blog may be flotsam, but it can still put across a consistent message in its lay-out, FAQs and links.

The trouble is that it's such a hard thing to make generalisations about because data is impossible to gather. As a result people tend to extrapolate from the blogs they read, and know nothing of the 99% of blogs they don't. Don't let us "aimless intellectuals" taint your view!

jackdalton jackdalton

For an 'aimless intellectual' Paul Miller makes a number of very good points... :-)
Particularly, the comment about clustering effect and maintaining public interest over a longer span. Perhaps the difficulty is not that there are no activist blogs; there are. They just operate differently from 'ordinary' jo blogger type blogs which makes them hard to find initially. Ironic, I know. But examples would include flyblogs like geneva03.org and hubproject.org.
On the question of evidence and 'hard data' about blogging, that is a problem. But I'm not sure it's impossible to gather data -- just very difficult. Anyway, what's wrong with a bit of demos-like evidence-lite polemic from time to time? :-)

jackdalton jackdalton

ooppss! yes I did. But come to think of it ... has anyone ever seen both in the same blog at the same time?

David Lee

on a related note - the guardian is currently running a competition for the best political blog. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/redbox/page/0,9030,1121602,00.html you can nominate the one of your choice. but hurry, you've only got until 25th jan...