Political blogging on the right and the left

A tale of two blogospheres: Discursive practices on the left and right

From American Behavioral Scientist

As presidential candidates from both parties gear up for the big day in November, more and more people are turning to political blogs to provide them with the latest news on the election-front. This study examined the differences among top political blogs from the right and the left and found that left-wing blogs encourage more user participation, present more opinion-related content, and were more likely to rally their readers to action. Researchers analyzed 155 top political blogs from a 2-week period in early August 2008. They first determined which blogs represented ideologies from the left and which represented ideologies of the right. They then applied a coding scheme to analyze blog structure, the incorporation of user activity, authorship, calls to action, and overall content from both types of blogs. The authors wrote, “The left is more egalitarian in opportunities for speech, more discursive, and more collaborative in managing the sites. The right is more individualistic and hierarchical, with its practice consisting more of pointing to external stories than of engaging in discussion or commentary.” They conclude “In effect, readers on the right are treated more as traditional media consumers: They play a relatively passive and marginal role in producing the primary content,” wrote the authors. “Users on the left have a more active, productive role, blurring the production-consumption distinction and, through this, increasing the probability that the left wing of the blogosphere incorporates a wider range of views than a more centralized model.”

Political scandal and new media: A technology of liberation?

Managing public outrage: Power, scandal, and new media in contemporary Russia

From New Media & Society

This article challenges the long held assumption that political scandals can only occur in liberal democracies, also as most studies on scandals were authored before the rise of the internet and social media. It scrutinizes scandals that emanate from the new sphere of social media. To address both aspects this study asks the question how are such ‘internet scandals’ impacting politics in contemporary Russia?  Furthermore it aims to enrich the broader, currently on-going academic debate on the question of whether the internet is to be seen rather as a ‘technology of liberation’ or as one of ‘control’. Do scandals that emanate from the new sphere of social media actually ‘empower’ Russian citizens?

Two case studies are presented to vividly illustrate how public outrage over key political issues can also be sparked by blatant violations of moral feelings deeply rooted in the populace. Russian citizens were not outraged because the culprits of the scandals had broken the law. Nor did they later care if the perpetrators were punished according to it. Rather, Russian citizens were appalled because they shared the deep moral feeling that the occurrences were so despicable that they simply should not happen in their country. These scandals presented could not have occurred without the existence of certain ‘spheres’ of media that functioned independently of central power. The relative weight of these media spheres, their respective political ideologies, and their internal structures seem to be crucial variables that determine the course and outcome of political scandals in a context that might be called a ‘hybrid’ media system. The approach proposed in this article seems to open up promising avenues for further comparative research across cultural and political contexts. While the scope of this article was limited to two case studies from Russia, it would be valuable to see how the findings are paralleled by or deviate from those, for instance, related to internet scan­dals in China, Arabic countries, or other regions of the world.

The Jesus factor of the iPhone

How the iPhone became divine: new media, religion and the intertextual circulation of meaning

From New  Media & Society

The labeling of the iPhone as the ‘Jesus phone’ illustrates how new media objects can possess multiple layers of meaning, which can shape how they are perceived by the public. This study explores the relationship between religious language, imagery and technology. In advance of its launch in 2007 bloggers had branded the forthcoming device not only as a revolutionary technology, but as a technological savior by combining the power of an iPod, cellphone and PDA. The iPhone was being referred to as the ‘Jesus phone’ online ‘the holy grail of all gadgets’. Media embraced the religious language and imagery, and eventually Apple’s iPhone media campaign incorporated this mystical aura into its ads, subtly appropriating the divine imagery for its own benefit. The study suggests a need to test the extent to which religious metaphors have sticking power.