What I’m about to say is …

• My own opinion, backed by research where appropriate
• Applies more to the political blogging world
• Open to discussion and debate. That is why we’re here.

Some beliefs about the internet and blogging

• It’s accessible to everyone
• It’s free to set up a blog
• It doesn’t matter who you are; the internet is anonymous
• Good stuff rises to the top. If you’re not on top, maybe you aren’t any good.

The real blogosphere

• Strong influence of a few “A-list bloggers”
• About half of all bloggers are female, yet “A-list” is dominated by (mostly white, middle-and-upper-class) men
  (Technorati Top 100, Blogpulse, or Truth Laid Bare Blogging Ecosystem)
• Power and influence determined by inbound links
• Links depend on bloggers

Does where you stand depend on where you sit?

The Pie-Fight Debacle: DailyKos v. The Feminists

• Ad on DailyKos.com for the TBS show “The Real Gilligan’s Island” featuring a trashy cream pie fight between ‘Mary Ann’ and ‘Ginger’
• Several women wrote to DailyKos about the ad, arguing that a ‘progressive’ blog should not feature an ad of two scantily-clad women wrestling suggestively for a male audience.
• Kos’s response was that the debate wasn’t “important shit”

Questions

• Does what you are matter in what you write?
• Does what you are matter in what you read? / Does what the author is matter?
• Why are some voices more prominent than others?

Mo’ questions

• What’s ‘important shit’? Who decides? How is it determined?
• Is this skewed political blogosphere a problem for the national discourse?
• Are our current tools (i.e., Technorati’s blog finder) enough to bring new voices into the conversation?
• How else can we bring more voices into the fold?
• What other kinds of tools — human managed or technology managed would help?