all choir, no congregation
Jody has two interesting posts up about why she doesn’t blog much about politics. I write about politics when something is really making me crazy, or when an issue that I care about is being overlooked, or when I feel like I have something to say that’s different from what everyone else is saying about the same thing. I generally don’t write about things like Social Security that I feel have been talked to death. I think Jody’s right in saying that political blogs are no more "valorous and valuable," no less self-indulgent, than mommy blogs or sports blogs or dating blog.
Jody said that she doesn’t believe "that political discussions on blogs have much spill-over effect." Most political blogs do seem to act primarily as echo chambers, reinforcing the participants’ confidence that they are the keepers of the truth, but not affecting anyone in the outside world very much. They may have done in Dan Rather, but I’m not sure they changed anyone’s opinion of George Bush’s service in the National Guard.
Ironically, I think that mommy blogs may be more effective politically than political blogs. Mommy blogs reach an audience that isn’t all choir no congregation, and they also personalize issues in ways that move people. I could post until my fingers fell off about poverty policy and not get as many hits as I did for my series of posts about following the thrifty food plan for one month. Maura’s story about HB1677 on Democracy for Virginia didn’t really take off until Grrrl picked it up at Chez Miscarriage and all heck broke loose.
Nightline totally missed this in their story about blogging, even though they devoted a lot of time to the HB1677 story. They’re too worried about whether bloggers are "real journalists," which just doesn’t strike me as that important a question.
Ogged seems to have gotten it right in his post about mommy blogs:
"The mothers are profane, and horny, and pissed, and funny, and, still, devoted, and protective, and nurturing. What’s more, they write intelligently and in detail about how a particular bill, or urban plan, or school board, affects their lives. The real speech of mothers, and their commentary as mothers on what we’re used to thinking of as "the political" is, suddenly, itself part of political speech."
March 22nd, 2005 at 10:45 am
Yes, I think this is exactly right. Becoming a mom online was a real eye-opener to me about the ways that women politically organize.
March 22nd, 2005 at 6:48 pm
So true. I know that I changed the minds of more pro-lifers with my personal story than my ranting about the politics of choice did.
I even got some people to change how they voted. That was a good day…
March 23rd, 2005 at 4:50 am
There’s been a lot of handwringing about the issue of the lack of “women political bloggers” lately on left-leaning blogs such as MyDD.com.
What I tried to articulate in some of those discussions is that there are *many* progressive political women who are blogging, but most of them don’t write exclusively political blogs, and therefore aren’t “counted” as political bloggers. The insularity of the political blogging world is actually a hindrance, I think. As you correctly point out, the blogswarm around HB1677 took off on infertility blogs, and it was the women in the infertility blog community who did the lion’s share of the work in opposing HB1677 with action, not just words.
I did discuss this at length with John Donvan during our Nightline interview, and while it didn’t make the cut of the final program, I think he was really interested in how the story crossed from the political blog world to the larger parenting and infertility blog communities. I heard from a lot of women who said they had never written to a legislator before HB1677, but they got a taste of political power in this case and it tasted *really* good.
I told John Donvan that I’m convinced that Cosgrove never would have withdrawn HB1677 if the story went no further than DFV, DailyKos, and the usual suspects of liberal/progressive political blogs. Cosgrove would have heard from the same people whose votes he already knows he long ago lost. For the same reason, I don’t think that opposition to the bill from a group like Planned Parenthood would have made any difference to Cosgrove – he’s not looking for those votes, and opposition from PPVA might actually be a badge of honor for him. But hearing from hundreds of women from all parts of the ideological spectrum, especially from pro-life Republican women, made a big impact, I think. Furthermore, all of the initial contact with media outlets in Virginia was from ordinary women who had heard about the story through infertility blogs, not through political blogs, and I think that really impacted (in a a positive, productive way) the coverage of the story when it hit TV and newspapers.
I do hope that more women who consider themselves “mommy bloggers” or “knitting bloggers” or “infertility bloggers” will speak out more on political issues. We got a small taste of how powerful this can be with HB1677, and this kind of growing political power can be a really positive force for change.
March 23rd, 2005 at 9:24 pm
Well, I think Nightline’s right to be worried, even if they’re about 6 years late on the story. (Remember the B92 & indie-kid video bloggers in Belgrade, or the “are editors necessary” debates about Slate?) The print and TV people really haven’t wanted to believe that this free-press internet thing was a threat, and now that it’s popping up in news stories — increasingly as the subject — they’re overreacting to actual realities. But it is a genuine threat to them. There’s no particular reason, once TVs are just part of most people’s household media, that hot consumer markets should watch NBC and not video-based blogs. It’s the ultimate narrowcast, afaics. Best bet is likely what JNJ has done with BabyCenter: own the biggest hive.