[-empyre-] Re: blog wars

[Jill Walker <jill.walker@uib.no>]

>  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/10/technology/10BLOG.html

So, there's a concern that "war blogs", mostly right of center, angry 
about terrorist attacks, political and "attention getting" are taking 
over blogging and changing what blogging "is".

The New York Times wrote:
> "War blog editors need to make it clear to their audience
> that they are not the only kind of Weblog out there," said
> Cameron Barrett, a programmer and Web designer in New York
> who has been publishing his Camworld blog (camworld.com)
> since 1997, making him one of the first bloggers.

I find this really weird. After September 11 I read lots of blogs 
which talked about the war. I suppose I did come across some 
right-wing ones but I left them quick and read the left-wing ones 
instead, the ones that (seen through my particular set of prejudices) 
were more open minded and less vengeant. A few weeks back I read 
somewhere that most blogs are libertarian and that since Google loves 
blogs (http://www.corante.com/microcontent/articles/googleblog.shtml) 
that means that Google will rank libertarian and right wing sites 
higher than left wing sites. If true, that'd be worrisome. But how on 
earth does someone decide that most blogs are libertarian, or that 
most war blogs are right wing?

A conflict line between "the veteran bloggers" and "the war 
bloggers"? What nonsense. That is such a conflict-oriented, 
simplistic view of the world. Dividing things up into simple 
oppositions. "Most blogs" probably aren't in either camp, they grow 
together in countless clusters.

The thing about blogs is that most people will not see what they're 
not interested in. You read bloggers that are *like you* - much as 
most people make friends with people who are similar to them rather 
than with people who challenge all their prejudices and have 
completely different life priorities than they do. This might 
(unfortunately) mean that you never see what you don't know you're 
interested in, unless a blog they're interested in happens to link to 
it.

So my impression is that most blogs are left wing, slightly socialist 
or at least social democrats, thoughtful, constructive in their 
discussions and comments, interested in how the web works and in art 
and culture, and they're open-minded. Obviously that's probably not 
really true. I think claims that blogs are mostly libertarian, or 
right wing war blogs, are equally unlikely.

I like blogs for their non-confrontationalism, or for the possibility 
of non-confrontationalism. Flame wars are virtually non-existent in 
blogs - or rather, in the blogs that I read. It suits my personality 
beautifully. But I can see it's not entirely unproblematic.

Perhaps you actually have to confront more views that differ from 
your own in a mailing list than in blogosphere?


Jill