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.
Some recent examples of this phenomenon are described by John Quiggin, David Tiley, Tim Dunlop, Laura, Trevor Cook, Helen, referring to an article in the Walkley magazine, some confected commentary from Catherine Lumby, and a dumbassed panel discussion on RN respectively.
I’ve also been reading Barons to Bloggers, which is distinguished by the absence of contributions by any actual Australian bloggers (unless you count Margo Kingston and her online newspaper or whatever it’s called, who as I’ve noted before, distances herself from the term) and contains much hyperbole around the tired theme of bloggers vs. journalists and elitist proclamations that bloggers will never be as influential as op/edders, etc etc.
Given that some contributors also accept that the current business models and declining readership of Australian print media could lead to a commercial meltdown of Oz broadsheets (and that they also bemoan the falling standards of radio and tv commentary and journalism), why they persist in this adversarial narrowmindedness towards the blogosphere is beyond me. Unless it’s a reflection of the quality and insularity of the Australian media, an irony implied in their verbiage which they don’t observe.
Elsewhere: The definitive post on blog hating is at For Battle!.
Note: On Catherine Lumby’s intervention, and its questionable ethics (which are thoughtfully and thoroughly discussed at Road to Surfdom and Trevor Cook’s), I’d endorse this comment by the always wise David Tiley wholeheartedly.
Interesting post, Mark. There’s something romantic - in a writerly way - about what I recently had occasion to call the “quaint blog shops of yore” with their individual blogger behind the counter. But as forces within the media universe, there’s undoubtedly something to be said for aggregation. It can create a force in real-world media terms and is increasingly likely to do so.
Plus, it is difficult to maintain a quality blog by oneself, while attending to all those things that fall under the categories like ‘Life’, ‘Work’, ‘Relationships’, ‘Sleep’, etc. And, yeah, some of the stuff in the MSM in the last few weeks against the sphere is full-on neurotic. Not sure what brought it on in this particular phase of play.
Agree with all of that, C.L. I’m also curious as to where all this invective - which I agree contains weird elements of projection and blindnesses to msm’s own faults - comes from and why at this time.
I agree totally that Lumby’s intervention is bizarre and unethical. And her weak justification of it in terms of “questioning speaking positions” begs the question of why she finds hers threatened.
The world seems to be afloat with the phrase “the elephant in the room” at the moment. So, to indulge in a little cliche solidarity, let me say…
the elephant in the room about Australian blogging is that Australian op-ed is ratshit. Sclerotic. Stuck in about 1985. As boring as watching a paremecium trying to think about sex.
Oz blogging is functioning like community radio as long ago as the 1970’s, as our mob squirts around doing much better than our paid competitors.
I actually think the transition to mainstream will happen, particularly for our younger friends. In the meantime, aggregation is the go, although it adds another weird role to the system - the ringboss who keeps it all going.
Aggregation tends to happen because people don’t have the time to blog constantly, but the thing is not automatic. Good in the short term, but over a longer period I guess it has to be addressed.
Wot Dave said, but not so elegantly.
This blogging thang is not snap-frozen for the way dead tree media op-eds like to work but constantly morphing. But they can smell it’s not journalism we’re gonna swarm over and occupy but more commentary and opinion.
Good reporters will always find work. But lazy, dull and yes sclerotic opinionators can see the writing on the wall. And now they’re trying to nail us to it. Hah! We don’t need your stinkin’ walls.
Whether we’re left, right or who gives a fuck, we’re still all faster, funnier, nastier and more wired than all the Bolts, Adams and their ilk.
They’re now confronted with a true and uncontrollable marketplace not just of ideas but also of folks even sharper than them at packaging ideas. And they don’t like it up ‘em one bit do they?
I doubt blogs will soon take over from the mass media at straight reportage, but when it comes to commentary, deep background and merry quips, the best of the blogsphere (across the entire political spectrum) is going to town on the MSM’s arse like the Sex Pistols on Emerson, Lake and Palmer et al.
They’re already dead and they just don’t know it yet.
Plus would Bolt or Adams leave you with this kinda link?
http://jamiesrunoutgroove.blogspot.com/2005/09/mp3-jon-pertwee-i-am-doctor.html
Aggregation is also a great way of following blogs in particular areas - there are food aggregators and PR aggregators - which it make it viable and easy to follow a large number of blogs on a particular subject and to follow what is being discussed across the board. Because they are organised a long subject not viewpoint lines they can be very eclectic and give you serendipidity - that thing by which MSM reckopns bloggers actually have less choice than newspaperreaders. Del’icio.us and social bookmarking generally performs a similar role too
Food blogs http://fbl.ismyblogburning.com PR headlines http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?id=85 Because these examples use RSS they are not hard to establish and maintain, and I think they have an enduring role in interfacing with the blogosphere.
Blogs have commoditised the market for trolling, which leave Bolt, Ackerman, Devine etc etc competing in a market where you can get it better - for free.
There is also this persistent problem of many blogs being higher quality than the output of the mass media.
Commoditised market; higher quality from a competing industry; I smell disruptive technology and economic darwinism for the industry that cant compete any longer?
Mass media will probably have to find a profitable niche where the market isnt entirely commodified, or where they can add value in a way that the citizen commenteriat cannot.
On aggregation, network effects are important in any complex system. I am willing to swear that Singleton’s speech claiming that Beazley was a lazarus on a triple bypass came from a network effect of ozplogistan which roadtosurfdom probably made prominent after linking to an SSR article; and then propagating it up into mass media memory through Singleton’s speechwriter picking it up.
Wot everyone says especially Dave and Nabs, let’s get on with making this a more mature media (myself excluded because I reserve the right to exemplify the worst traits of blogging just to annoy the critics) and ignore the tosspots in the anti bloggging world.
If we build it they will come, and clearly in the catagory of opinion, they are coming.
David, nice to have you back around. My personal interest in political blogs came when I compared what people like John Quiggin and Tim Dunlop had to say when compared to the op-eds of the Oz with writers like Greg Sheridan, Frank Devine, and Angela Shanahan. I tend to read more individual blogs than collective blogs if only for the reason that individual blogs you can focus on the development of the individual and their views whereas with collectives you tend to concentrate on the development of the blog. Collectives have an advantage with the ability to maintain a higher rate content and a greater likelihood of covering an issue but their quality can be dragged down by the most annoying member.
As a food blogger my experiences are somewhat different and I think inn many ways it’s an ideal community. It’s collaborativeand cooperative and there seems to be a constant upping of the quality in what I’d like to think is a benign form of rivalry. For what is also a more personal and subjective area, I feel less like I’m rfiling through someone’s personal baggage as I will in the commenst section of a lot of politics blogs. There aren’t many collaborative food blogs but as Peter rightly points out, there are numerous ways of collating in group events such as Is My Blog Burning, World Wine Blogging Wednesday, End of Month Egg on Toast Extravaganza, and a new monthly Australian digest Omnivoribus Australis. With this amiable community of casual associations, we are the bonobo monkeys of the blog world.
We’ve had a good week or two with the press with pieces in the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, apparently there’s a piece coming up in the Gourmet Traveller, and Peter called me up for a chat. Are we in rivalry with food writers and the glossy mags? I’d have to say it’s nice to read and write about less than perfect meals that don’t quite turn out right that aren’t with fabulously successful Sydney architects. This said there is writing and photography that will go toe to toe with anything else out there. But to see it as a rivalry is wrong. Food, like politics, is at its best when its at grass roots and less under the thrall of a few stars and blogging facilitates this.
Finally maragarine is bad, but I’m sure you all knew this.
If I may be permitted a tiny bit of blogwhoring - the post of mine Mark linked to is the first of a string of realtime responses I wrote to Prof. Lumby’s interesting op-ed., and in many ways the least edifying.
A better one, because less whiney and more cryptofrivolous, may be found here.
Nice work, Laura!
mark: with an ‘a’!!!!
hmmm, I think your use of ‘intervention’ to describe lumby’s article is telling. would you describe any blog post discussing the mass-media as an intervention in mass-media? maybe? unlikely. however, any reverse scrutiny (ie mass-media looking at individual blogging) seems a bit weird, certainly more like an ‘intervention’ than a dialogue as such.
the discussion around ’speaking positions’ reminds me of lyotard’s discussion of language games. blogging seems to easily participate in the speaking game of the mass-media (or at least the blogosphere thinks it does) with the mass-media hardly ever explicitly ’speaking back’. even in the case of famous US blog ‘interventions’ the mass-media still had to run with the story before anything happened. blogging does not have the sedimented legitimacy of the mass-media as a social institution although it operates within the media milieu.
But it’s not a dialogue, Glen, and it’s not really scrutiny either as Lumby - either by inattention or wilfully - mischaracterised and distorted what Laura wrote. Lumby’s claim that her article in the Age and Laura’s post are somehow equivalent misses just about everything in terms of power relations between the msm and individual bloggers and herself and Laura.
I return to the point David Tiley made - in the comment to which I’ve linked in the note above - Lumby came under (unfair) attack from RWDBs in the sphere in respect of her commentary on the “culture wars”. Rather than tackle these people directly, instead her “intervention” focusses on two female bloggers/commenters, who had never taken aim at her, who are thoughtful and who rarely engage in polemics.
As a putative expert in gender studies and discourse, you’d think that Lumby should draw the obvious conclusion when she reflects on her motives and her text.
Aside from that, I’m not sure if my comment is directly responsive to yours, as I’m not sure I’ve understood yours.
Mark Cuban’s blog ran a piece about MSM a little while ago discussing something similar. Will people do away with free to air television in favour a mish-mash of 500 plus channels? Not on your life he says. The reason is that people being people are essentially lazy by nature and would rather have programming chosen for them by the free to air masters. I think this is true enough. Choosing movie’s etc. over Foxtel is just a little harder than watching free to air.
I think this is the same with the print medium. Most peeple won’t be like us: getting our news and opinion from the web. It is far easier to have this stuff selected for you. Where will blogs be in all this? Hard to say but my bet is that they will form an integral part of the new medium. My bet is that print and pixels will marry in some way.
What’s interesting is that 60% of Americans under 30 now get their news info from the web. The average age of a free to news watcher in the US is now 60……hmmmmmmmmm.
Interesting stuff.
Yeh margarine is ree-volting. (Except Nuttelex.)
Interestingly, Joe, one of the biggest fears expressed in the Barons to Bloggers book was that people would use forms of online customisation to read only the bits of papers they wanted to read. I don’t get this myself - surely few people read newspapers cover to cover. Perhaps what worries them is that people will source news selectively from the web without paying a cent for a newspaper. I tend to do this myself - about the only print newspaper I buy regularly is the Fin because it’s not online to any great extent (and The Economist if that counts)… But the level of hysteria expressed by some contributors made it hard to work out exactly what they thought the threat was.
Nuttelex is good!
The new easily spreadable butter is a great improvement!