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How Blogs Blow Things Out Of Proportion

When people who aren't bloggers (and some who are) say anything the least bit critical about the blogosphere, they open themselves to online villification. When the "enemies" of the blogosphere offer such criticisms, especially enemies named Lieberman, it's Joseph bar the door!

I noted the phenomenon of thin-skinned bloggers about a year ago when Think Progress lambasted Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for a perceived attack on bloggers. On Monday, Think Progress targeted Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn.

Several bloggers, including me, cited that Think Progress report to poke fun at Lieberman, and in fairness, Lieberman brought some of it on himself with his bizarre reference to the "vituperation toxicity" of blogs. But after reading an objective account of Lieberman's comments in National Journal's own CongressDaily the next morning, my perspective changed a bit.

Bloggers who reported on the "civility" event where Lieberman spoke made it sound like both he and House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, were bashing blogs. That's not the impression left by CongressDaily's coverage, which has no stake in how the blogosphere is portrayed.

Here's what CD wrote:

Lieberman said influential blogs, cable television and talk radio add to divisiveness by reinforcing polarized politics, but he said lawmakers have the ultimate responsibility to overcome those forces and work cooperatively with the other party."In the end, the problem is us. We have to lead," Lieberman said. "This is a question of whether we are going to lead or whether we are going to follow the core groups in each party."

Yes, Lieberman did indeed argue that blogs and other new media play a role in America's political divisiveness -- and he is absolutely right about that. But context is everything. Lieberman did not merely attack blogs. He criticized them as part of the political culture as a whole, including the politicians that he said ultimately are responsible for changing that culture. That is a reasoned argument and one that is fair to all involved.

So why did blogs get so worked up? Here are the reasons:

1) They hate Lieberman (at least liberal bloggers do), so anything he says is suspect.

2) That is especially true with anything Lieberman says about blogs. The netroots attack him relentlessly, so of course, his opinion of blogs is driven by animosity, not good sense.

3) Bloggers can do no wrong. Only politicians and journalists make mistakes, and any politician or journalist who dares criticize the Almighty Blog is worthy of condemnation.

Bloggers brought that uncivil mindset to the civility discussion, and it is precisely why they too often blow legitimate criticisms of the blogosphere out of proportion.

Posted by Danny | 12:01 PM

Comments

There are moderate voices and sites out there (mine, for example) - they just don't get the buzz. Nasty sells newspapers.

Robert | 05.02.07 12:31 PM

Yah, and the mainstream press is the epitomy of journalistic moderation. We all admire how the alphabet channels never sensationalize the news.
What planet are your from?

jeff | 05.02.07 12:36 PM

I see what you're citing more as a human problem than a blanket indictment of blogging. There are always some bloggers who react in knee-jerk fashion while others are far more measured in their responses. The same is true in all endeavors - including the media.

Journalists engage in exactly the same behaviors - relentlessly hyping certain stories and neglecting or even burying others of equal importance. That's one of the reasons we criticize them. Bloggers do lack editorial control, but having watched the lamestream media pull some real croppers over the past three years and then adamantly refuse to correct them, one has to wonder at the efficacy of this vaunted oversight. The more credible bloggers respond - and self-correct - in a far more agile fashion which says to me that there's some value in not having so much corporate overhead.

The mob aspect of blogging is disturbing, but one has only to watch the media coverage of the Duke rape case or the Anna Nicole trial to see the same feeding frenzy in motion.

Good post, though :)

Cassandra | 05.02.07 12:58 PM

The unfortunate truth is that as a conveyor of political news and partisan blather the internet is a relatively recent phenomenon that has yet to sort out its own standards of reasonable conduct. A situation somewhat analogous to the first half of the eighteenth century where the content of the broadsheets, tabloids and newspapers of the day would have made even a William Randolph Hearst blanche just a half generation later.

And let's face it, yelping for the defenestration of a Lieberman, pondering with delight the merits of the assasination of a Cheney, and demonizing all those unready to man the barricades with you and your small band of like-minded phantasists and fellow travellers, brings ad-clicks and revenue will sitting in the comfort of you home-office.

If you can keep the lumpen-proletariat in a lather it is not such a bad gig.

P.S. The proper spelling for this sub-set of asocially pathological miscreants is "nutroots".

bubba | 05.02.07 01:23 PM

Any evidence from the popular blogs of the right on this?

Assistant Village Idiot | 05.02.07 02:02 PM

What we see, in the blogosphere, is the effect of a few main blogs shaping opinion. That, in many ways, follows the tradition of the MSM: a few sources get elevated as 'representing' a larger constituency. Those few get hits, they get the network effect and they get visibility from that. That is the encapsulation of one to many networking of the MSM. One voice or small set of voices speaking out to many listeners. Put up any internet map and you see the bright clusters of the 'six apart' nature of those most connected being hubs in that hub and spoke system.

What flies under the radar screen of that view and of the leader effect is another phenomena seen in cities that also have followed this same network pattern. The hubs become too well trodden, too blandified and too trafficked to actually serve as information exchanges. They become less useful for ideas as traffic goes up. Like cities the movement then is outward in the network and then moving *around* the centralized hubs. Cities have a problem of first the suburbs and then the exurbs, both of which start becoming *places* of interest. The cities remain important, but the vitality in the system is moved outer to the 'edge cities'.

That is the many-to-many paradigm of the internet and new media. While the main hubs in this system become shriller to try and remain as important and vital parts of the system, they have their own self-marginalizing effect. While still important for the community they inspired, the community itself moves away when the realization that individuality requires free expression separate from the idea space of the hub. One of the main points missed in religious warfare is not that sect to sect warfare is bad, but that intra-sectarian strife is far worse and vehement: there are none so scorned as those that you agree with 90%. Suddenly that 10% difference is the cause of needing to put forth how that difference makes *all* the difference, no matter what else is agreed upon.

That does not work for long term stability and causes marginalization even further as the hubs start to castigate more individuals who do not adhere to the central beliefs of the hub. That then empowers the rim, the edge, to communicate via separate means and hold more many-to-many contacts as the need for common space is realized. That is very, very hard to do in geographic cities with limited space. On a network of ideas, however, common space is *built* by those willing to share and expand it.

The 'netroots' is now in the process of becoming vehement, outcasting the 10% difference as 'unbelievers'. What that does to those that have problems doing that is call into question the actual agreement areas. In the world of religion that cycle of break-up, scattering, reform, new problems, marginalization, break-up, scattering, reform... took centuries. At net speed it will take a decade or two to burn itself out, although even that cycle is harnessed to Moore and Metcalfe. But the many-to-many has already started as have the small but vital communities of people willing to find common ground and agree to disagree on other things. That will take time as individuals grow disenchanted with screaming and look to actually make something. Some never will, of course.

Let us hope that we can keep to Ben Franklin and learn to hold things in common and understand differences and disagreement. Otherwise we shall, assuredly, all hang separately.

ajacksonian | 05.02.07 03:22 PM

Holy Crap! Are you saying that BLOGS BLOW THINGS OUT OF PROPORTION?

Dan Collins | 05.02.07 07:02 PM

Lieberman said influential blogs, cable television and talk radio add to divisiveness by reinforcing polarized politics,

Of course they do. In the old days, everyone got basically the same facts/narrative from the Big Three. It's hard to disagree sharply when your field of view is constrained like that.

Now that everyone has access to legions of unfiltered facts out there, the dots get connected in a huge variety of ways. Not all ways are equally legit, and people do tend to prefer their own flavor of dot, but the solution isn't to return to the Big Three and their Grand Unifying Theory of Everything.

dicentra | 05.02.07 07:28 PM

That's it Dan. You owe me a new monitor.

Cassandra | 05.03.07 04:28 PM

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