Blogging is Power!

Through utilizing my favorite search engine Google I stumbled upon this interesting website for local conservatives. This particular website is called The Buffalo Bean. The blogger Matt Margolis doesn’t utilize a pseudonym. Matt is a writer by profession, and his recent publications is Caucus of Corruption (2007), which was co-authored by Mark Noonan. The Buffalo Bean was born June 13th, 2008. Technorati has ranked the website 368,349th.
This blog presents itself in my opinion with a serious tone. Maybe I think that because he is by profession a writer so everything that he writes sounds more on the formal side. He definitely injects his own brand of educated humor, the same type that my tour guide showcased on my college visit to Georgetown. This is an excerpt from his blog on August 12th, 2008:
“Scott Leffler interviewed Jon Powers on his radio show today. He’s posted a link to a podcast of the show.
I’ve listened to a good portion of it, and found Powers to be quite disappointing. He started off the show sticking to his usual script about why he’s running for Congress, and his responses to the questions about War Kids Relief were very defensive and quite frankly, I think Powers has to stop making it the centerpiece of his campaign and repeating over and over that he was on the cover of Newsweek.”
Obviously if he’s taking the time to post about politics he’s a critical person which I find to be positive in this circumstance because, it’s very easy to just listen to what you are told and to never investigate facts and form your own opinions.
Matt’s serious tone turns to dismissive when it comes to responding to comments from people who usually have an opposing (Democratic) viewpoint. One person attempted to respond to a post where he spoke about some good news for the Republican candidate Chris Lee and the opposed insinuated that Chris Lee wasn’t what was best for anyone but Chris Lee.
According to Dresner, under the right circumstances blogs have the potential to affect local politics. To affect change a blog needs to focus on a previously unexplored issue because they do have the power to “shape and constrain the larger political debate”.

If the blog’s power can extend to “the larger political debate” and I interpret that as affecting the national perceptions, than most certainly if scaled back it can affect the local assumptions and ideas.

To get the message out smaller blogs post to their sites for the most part, and then link up to what Dresner calls “focal point” blogs to increase their potential audience. Candidates have also been utilizing websites and blogging to influence their constituency. According to Gill, Howard Dean in the 2003 elections was among the first of the candidates to reach out to his audience using new media, and he was attracting 30,000 visitors a day at its peak.

Blogs are also effective in affecting the outcome of local elections because not only links, to other sites but because of the word of mouth factor. I have a friend who started a website based around the elections and informing voters. It has become pretty well known being featured in the Buffalo News and also other publications. I initially intended to reference his website, but it doesn’t include blogs, it more involves forums.

However, ideas that are introduced in the blog I think spread in a more important way offline and that is how differences are made. The most beneficial thing for a blog visitor to do is to bring what they read up in discussion out in public. This can be a way that opinions can be swayed and elections can really be influenced.

References

Drezner, D.W. (2004 August). The power and politics of blogs. Retrieved October 24, 2008, from The power and politics of blogs Web site: http://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/spring05/cps182s/readings/blogpowerpolitics.pdf

Gill, K. (2004). How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?. Retrieved October 24, 2008, from Department of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle Web site: http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill