Anywho, I found it interesting. Kevin invented Friday Cat Blogging, btw.
So would that anecdote suggest that over time the analysis of the blogosphere has gotten more accurate as more and a more varied cross-section of people have come to engage the medium? And if so, have we lost something if we’ve gained accuracy – has there been some kind of intrinsic trade off?
More accurate? You kidder, you.
I’m not sure how to put it. I’d say the blogosphere network has gotten denser in a way, but that’s not the same thing as being more accurate. Besides, at the same time that more experts have entered the arena, the tribalism and partisanship of the rest of the blogosphere has increased. So even if the experts have a positive influence — which I’m not sure of — I don’t think that’s translated into higher overall quality.
Basically, the experts provide us with more raw data than they used to, but it gets cherry picked and twisted as much or more than it ever has.
In your view, what has fueled that increase in tribalism, partisanship, and cherry-picking and does it appear to have occurred equally on “both sides”?
That’s pretty hard to pin down. But if I had to guess, I’d toss out three reasons.
First, politics itself has gotten increasingly tribal and the blogosphere has followed along.
Second, as the blogosphere aged, bloggers started to realize that their opposite numbers were never going to change their minds. As that became clearer and clearer, engaging with them got a lot less interesting.
And third, blogs became more important. When you’re just talking amongst yourselves, there’s no harm in having an ordinary conversation. But when blogs started having a genuine influence on public discourse, that began to seem a lot less appealing. After all, if there’s something serious at stake, it makes sense to do whatever it takes to promote the cause. Politics ain’t beanbag, and blogs these days are serious players in the political process.
Plus I suppose there’s just a tiredness factor. After you’ve rehearsed the same arguments a dozen times, you just start to get more short-tempered about the whole thing. That’s a vicious circle that’s hard to stop.
This all probably applies equally to both sides.
Conservative blogs have, I think, gotten objectively crazier in the Obama era than liberal blogs did even at the height of the Bush era. Some of the stuff they’re pushing these days is just batshit nuts. But solely on a partisanship scale, liberal blogs today strike me as just as partisan as conservative ones.
Frankly, there’s hardly anyone left on either side who isn’t almost completely partisan. It’s a lot like talk radio.
http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2009/ ... evin-drum/
