Political Blogwatchers

Another political blog, this one surveying the use of blogs by American candidates, has popped up. You can visit it at Campaigns Online.

I'm curious to know what you think about the use of blogs (and Websites in general) in politics.

Comments

[nakedjen]

There was an entire session about this at Bloggercon last weekend in Boston. The general concensus there was that blogs were changing the face of politics. Quite frankly, I think blogs are a very interesting way for politicians to push their agendas to the technorati, but they're not going to reach mainstream audiences this way.

Why? Because mainstream audiences are not bloggers and haven't even heard of a blog. And there's still more people in the world without internet access than with it.

Until those numbers change, it is simply another tool. Not a way to push an agenda.

[Crawford Kilian]

Thanks for your comments, and I take your point.

But I am so old that I can recall learning about the invasion of South Korea in 1950 via TV. My dad was a TV engineer in the steam-powered era, and we had a TV even during the political conventions of 1948. (I recall that summer and fall as a time when political coverage on radio was an annoying interruption of my favorite radio programs, like Don Winslow of the Coast Guard, and Red Ryder. I don't recall TV's political coverage.)

Those televised conventions didn't reach many people (and much of the audience was drunk, TVs being an amenity of bars in those days). But look at how TV has taken over politics!

If the analogy holds, in the next few years we will see a tsunami of political advocacy on the Web, much of it in blogs, and most of it pretty awful. But it will have an impact, also pretty awful.