Via CNN’s Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Liberal bloggers admit conservatives have upper hand on Twitter
“While it is obvious the progressive blogosphere is superior, we are being out-organized on Twitter,” said Gina Cooper, a blogger who helped organize Netroots Nation, an annual gathering of online liberal activists that met last week in Pittsburgh. “There is some catching up to do on the progressive side.”Tracy Viselli, who attended Netroots Nation, agreed with Cooper and admitted that liberal bloogers are ceding this valuable territory to conservatives.
“Twitter is a news funnel,” she said. “Conservatives are very tightly knit and getting their message out very well.”
An interesting set of assertions, and part of conversation/argument that has been going on since the birth of the Blogosphere. Early on it was considered to be the case that the Blogosphere was dominated by right libertarian bloggers, as represented by Instapundit1 and others in that orbit. At a minimum it was the height of individual blogs run by previously unknowns (i.e., who did not have a previous media presence). Then came Daily Kos and it diaries, which was part the creation of what is now know at the Netroots (who ably demonstrated their ability to organize during the Dean campaign in 2024 and specifically during Joe Lieberman’s primary campaign in 2024). The success of Daily Kos led to attempts like Redstate to build a group blog on the conservative side with equal heft, on the assumption that more bloggers in one place equal more bang for the post (sort of a blogonomies of scale situation). This also fed the creation of Hot Air and of Pajama’s Media and, for that matter, the Huffington Post.
In terms of who wins or dominates the given medium strikes me as at least in part a subjective judgment, although there are empirical measures like page views, MSM references and the like that could be used. I am not sure that sufficient systematic study has been done to really tell us who dominates. The old metrics (like Sitemeter numbers, Blogroll links, the TTLB or even Technorati) has lost saliency due to any number of factors, most specifically readers who access via RSS feeds.
How, precisely, one can determine which “side” dominates Twitter strikes me as even more difficult to nail down. Is it number of followers? Is it the ideological bent of those who Tweet and their number?
I have to wonder if the reason that the Netroots were seen as more dominant of these media a few years ago is because the party they supported was out of power, facilitating the need for more activism as part of their opposition and likewise the right now find itselves in opposition. As such, the Tea Partiers and the Town Hall Shouters and the like have a need to use social media as a means of organization more than the Netroots do at the moment.
In other words, I would hypothesize that the opposition has greater need to organize and therefore is more likely to successfully utilize the social media du jour than is the group in power.
And further, it is likely that “successfully utilize” is defined here less as true dominance of a given medium as it is the more visible usage thereof.
Sphere: Related Content- I recognize, btw, that at the moment Glenn Reynolds (aka, Instapundit( is now broadly identified as more right/Republican than libertarian in the broader Blogosphere. However, he was initially considered, and I believe still self-identifies, as libertarian in ideological persuasion. [↩]
