Larvatus Prodeo

In doing some research for the book chapter on political blogs I’m just finishing up now that the teaching semester has come to a close, I came across an interesting facet of the Canadian blogosphere – aggregation is big, and it’s largely along partisan lines. For instance, Canadian Progressive bloggers. This seems to confirm an increasing tendency toward concentration in the political blogosphere, which I remarked upon in an earlier post (though I emphasise that there’s still a very valuable role for individual voices in the ’sphere). This may be because, as some research on US blogs found [link to pdf], concentration and impact of message is enhanced by aggregation, and may also be a sign of something that these researchers have also found – an increasing disconnect between the right and the left of the sphere. It’s hard to judge the degree to which these phenomena are taking place in Australia. There’s still some interplay between lefties and righties, and I think that’s to be encouraged, even if not many lefties find too many right leaning blogs to their taste and vice versa. As to aggregation, the rise of the collective blog (at least among lefties and libertarians – righties don’t seem to be joiners!) and features such as Crikey’s blogwatch and Labor First’s blog page may be signs of what’s to come.

It’s interesting as well to note some signs of the influence of Canadian blogs, and American blogs have reached new heights of agenda setting both in terms of media coverage and political tactics in the events surrounding the Miers nomination.

In Australia, however, we still seem mired in tedious debates initiated by big media about how ephemeral and ill read blogs allegedly are, and how they can never replace journalism. Whatever. They’re not meant to.

Continue reading ‘Why We Should Be More Canadian’