Study: there aren’t many blog readers in the ideological center
I guess that makes us a niche read here at TMV!
Henry Farrell comments on a new paper he, Eric Lawrence, and John Sides just finished (available at SSRN — they’d like you to download from there if you’re signed up, pdf here if not):
First – blog readers seem to exhibit strong homophily. That is to say, they overwhelmingly choose blogs that are written by people who are roughly in accordance with their political views. Left wingers read left wing blogs, right wingers read right wing blogs, and very few people read both left wing and right wing blogs. Those few people who read both left wing and right wing blogs are considerably more likely to be left wing themselves; interpret this as you like. Furthermore, blog readers are politically very polarized. They tend to clump around either the ‘strong liberal’ or the ‘strong conservative’ pole; there aren’t many blog readers in the center. This contrasts with consumers of various TV news channels, as the figure below illustrates. All of this suggests that blog readership is unlikely to be associated with the kinds of deliberative exchange between different points of view that some political theorists would like to see.
Second – blog readers are much more likely than non blog readers to engage in politics (through voting, giving money to candidates etc). Not only that, but left wing blog readers are significantly more likely than right wing blog readers to participate in politics. You could interpret this as evidence of more general depression among conservatives etc, but our best guess is that this is in large part the result of the netroots effect. Having a strong political movement which is pushing readers to make donations etc is likely to have real consequences. Obviously, we would like to have more data before we could make a really good case that our guess is correct.
John Sides has more here. Henry talked with Cass Sunstein (who he called “pretty skeptical about the virtues of Internet communication”) on the topic back in March. As did Eugene Volokh in May. Until this study I thought Volokh won the day.
I still will want to watch things evolve moving forward… btw, be sure to read the comments on the post, too.
Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.
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It's hard to know what to make of this. On the one hand, it states that people who like politics act like everybody else. Probably not too much overlap on the message boards for Megadeath and Miley Cyrus either. Neither group is trying to learn about other types of music as we would ideally want them to.
On the other hand, one should be careful not to use blogs to understand the body politic. Some small percent are at Kos, TMV, and Michelle Malkin. The majority are still online but perhaps reading CNN or their Google News Read. Of course, this group is largely passive….
One of the issues in getting real, honest debate is time. I once thought of starting a blog by inviting people of various political persuasions who seemed to be better at engaging in debate of issues and not attacks on people, but real debate takes energy and time. I'd have to actually research something instead of just give a take off the top of my head, which is my stunning contribution here.
This is the most fascinating post in a long time, although I'm not sure what to make of the findings. .I'm hoping academics follow the example and carry this kind of examination further.
A subject that I've been mulling over came up in the video: the responsibility of bloggers, if any. Volokh seems to be a rights purist, and he pretty much dismissed the question of responsibility as having a chilling effect on free speech, plus not having the staff to do fact checking or comment content chekcing.
While I agree that any attempt at regulaton would likely end in disaster, I must say that the total lack of concern about personal responsibility is alarming. .Reputations and lives have been ruined on the blogosphere by false allegations and the rumor mill. There is not much the victims can do, because even a successful lawsuit wouldn't erase the allegations.from linked commentary and comments. Free speech vs ruined lives is not a opic that should be so easily shrugged off.
Not being able to fact check, at least at some rudimentary level, seems rather like a lame excuse, as well. If you can't do a job adequately, then why should you claim the right to do it at all?
I've always felt that rights and responsibilties should be linked, pragmatic applications deciding the cut off point. Not a very popular point of view these days, it would seem.
I guess that makes us a niche read here at TMV!
One could hope so, but unfortunately, the tone of a lot of articles here gets pretty harsh. One might even say, immoderate. It seems infrequent that a problem is taken from a couple of viewpoints, or even examined through in a pro/con sort of way. I'd go so far as to say the tone of a FOX or NY Times piece is more centrist.
This is still a portal site for me because of the blogroll, but at times, some headlines and articles feel like teeth pulls. Even Joe seems to have started to drift off into a bit of anger.
Although, in the bigger picture, perhaps it is impossible to have a blog without some vitrol in it since a certain amount of what makes a blogger keep on blogging is their passion. I'd wish it weren;t so, but I guess that may be a fact of it.
I think the key at TMV is that writers and commenters here seem to fall on both sides of the spectrum. The tone of debate is a notch above the norm (well, often anyway).
I think a good part of the appeal of blogs that are our brand of partisan is a belief (supported endlessly with facts) that we can't trust the MSM to investigate or present quality journalism. We fact-check with our partisans, and though they may present their own inaccuracies, we get more perspective on the news. I suppose it would give us even more perspective to read a bit on the other side, and I try to. TMV does provide more diversity of opinion than most because it is not strongly partisan in either direction.
As a side note, I doubt Joe and others have time to expand this blog, but I'm a big fan of the Reader Posts section over at TPM. They provide a good opportunity for more writers, and some of the readers are pretty talented writers. The “Recommend this” button allows reader posts to be voted on and elevated by other readers. Sorry to plug another blog here, but thought I'd mention it.
Most blogs seem to fall into the trap of trying to assess the moral worth of various camps (usually the evil right or evil left depending upon your point of view) instead of discussing the merits of an idea or an event. So, the post about ignoring torture turned in the comments into a “which group is morally worse” discussion. I fell into this trap yesterday in the post about Obama's service proposals. Instead of collecting good thoughts on whether the program was good or bad, one gets caught up in a war about whether or not the right or the left are hypocrits. It happens over and over and it's rare when we avoid it. One exceptional instance recently on TMV was the discussion of t-steel's post on the death penalty and child rape. The comments mostly stayed on the topic of whether or not the death penalty was warranted, despite being quite passionate, and didn't fall into some judgment of the right or the left. Actually, I think most political blogs would be better off if they agreed not to use the terms “right” or “left” at all.