Dynamic Scoring
Scott Winship has more up on the Prospect website about the ideological proclivities of the netroots. It occurs to me reading his article that it's worth keeping in mind that what "the netroots" is is, at this point, almost certainly something of a moving target.
The thing about the internet is that, at the moment, it's all a relatively novel technology and, consequently, has very uneven penetration throughout the country. In particular, blogs are -- as of today -- both a very high-profile phenomenon and a rather narrow one. Lots of people read some political blogs, and we've reached a point where all professional political people -- be they journalists or operatives or politicians or what have you -- know what they are and know something about it. Consequently, they have some influence. But at the same time most people aren't actually engaged with the political blogosphere at all, just as most people don't know how to use BitTorrent, don't understand how Wikipedia works (as witnessed by the fact that The Atlantic has a long article laying it out), have never used Voice Over Internet Protocol, and despite their burgeoning popularity have never visited YouTube or Flickr.
When you think about this stuff outside of politics, the common assumption is that just like the basic technology of email and online shopping, these things will spread over time. Telecommunications firms assume that someday just about everyone will use VOIP and that the related Video Over Internet Protocal technology will become extremely important as fiber-optic connections spread. Everyone will, someday, start posting their photos to Flickr and check out amusing things on YouTube, or else those sites will come to be overshadowed by something similar but better.
Blogs are probably the same way. At the moment, they have an "early adopter" demographic -- whiter, richer, better-educated than the general population -- and, consequently, the class of progressive blog readers has a different ideological caste than the general class of people who usually vote for the Democrats.
Over time, though, one would expect the demographics of the blog audience to converge with the overall demographics of the population. There was a time, after all, when the demographics of people with cable television was very different from the demographics of the population at large. Similarly, there was a time when the demographics of people who'd ever used a computer was very different from the demographics of the population at large. Over time, though, those technologies -- like anything else -- spreads over time and becomes normalized. Blogs will probably follow the same trajectory and the political "differentness" of the netroots should abate consequently.
There's a qualifier, which is that the diffussion of technology takes a long time. Cable didn't reach 50% penetration until the early '90s. Owning a computer matches closely to the public at large, but still skews towards a whiter, more educated, more affluent demographic 20 years after the first Macintosh.
Also, political blogging certainly has some selection bias. Do Rush Limbaugh listeners represent a more complete swath of America than they did in 1994, even on non-political axes or is it about the same?
August 9, 2006 9:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interestingly coincides with a time when Turner's CNN did lots of hard news coverage and a bit of serious pundit talk and there were not such things as MSNBC news trying to capture more of the male high school sophomore audience with puppet theatre, zany sound effects, reports of two-headed cats and William Hung's singing. Also a time when shows like Rita Cosby's were on the broadcast networks at dinnertime, and on cable, Court TV covered actual court cases in a serious manner. Also a time (1996) when Fox News was a twinkle in Roger Ailes' eye.
Be careful what you wish for?
From the 'Diary of a Rat' blogger's report on a June symposium addressing the current state of online journalism, my highlighting:
On the political power side of the equation, I noticed that
Kos told his readers what to do last night:
It will be interesting to watch whether they actually follow his instructions en masse, and, if so, how targets like Harry Reid and Bill Clinton react to that.
August 9, 2006 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
One can find a worse demographic group of supporters than "early adopters".
I think that what "netroots" achieve is that it provides a medium appropriate for people who do not follow religiously mass mailing or talk radio, who want to express themselves and at least think that they weight different kinds of opinions before making their choice, and this medium gives them a way to be politically active.
Religious right is connected with tele-evangelism and mass mailings. The active core, those who fund our elected wingnuts (rather than just vote) is probably only several million. Liberal netroots are becoming another political force, one of many, to be sure, but more influencial than raw numbers would suggest.
August 9, 2006 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
damn. I was hoping this really was going to be a post about dynamic scoring!
August 9, 2006 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's also an upward limit to how many people are actually going to be interested in political blogs and becoming part of the netroots.
The activist wing of the Dems may always have been different, demographically speaking, from the non-activist Dem voters, and this may not actually change all that much now that the internet plays a role.
August 9, 2006 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink