Can Blogs be Controlled?
Wilkinson mentioned “controlling the dialogue”. Right there, he taps into the most consequential split between blogs and traditional media. For the politician, blogs are absolutely uncontrollable; they are an intrinsically chaotic medium with a penchant to move towards all out conflict. The informal, almost personalized feeling of blogs creates a different reaction in the viewer than traditional media does. While a TV report might lead an oppositional viewer to kick his couch in disgust, a disagreeable post leads a blog reader to start firing off E-mails, entering into comments and contact his friends to come help.
One oft-missed fact of the Dean Campaign was that their comment boards were embarrassing, the most frequent participants borderline nuts. Due to the volume of their posts, they could really set the terms of the interactive debate, people had to operate off of their postulates simply because they wrote enough that people had to respond. The dialogue is uncontrollable simply because it has too many participants to control. What does that mean?
The politician in question must cultivate the power centers within the blog. On any site, the head of the site (Myself or Markos) and a few of the respected posters are the main influencers, hundreds of other commentators take their cues from us. To control the dialogue on the blogs, you need to win over the established writers. Since bloggers tend to be average citizens with little access, a bit of love from the higher ups and a feeling of involvement can lead to undying loyalty; a phenomenon exploited to great effect by Joe Trippi and the Dean Campaign.
Unlike in the media, the politician can’t control the dialogue on a blog. He has to appeal to those who do control the dialogue; if they’re not on his side, the majority of their readers won’t be either. If they are, the readers will soon be converted (not all, but many) and they will begin converting their friends, etc. It’s Gary Hart’s “concentric circles” from 1984, they’re as applicable virtually as they were door to door. Nonetheless, even a few unconverted readers can influence the dialogue on a site. Since they are part of the medium, unless you control them all, you can never claim to control the media.
