Blogging the Political: Politics and Participation in a Networked Society

Blog aggregator Technorati reports the existence of well over one hundred million blogs. Despite the medium’s ubiquity, the impact of political blogging on politics and civic engagement has not been systematically examined. In an era of depressed civic engagement where access to the media by common citizens is limited, blogs have the power to change the political landscape. Blogging the Political catalogues the individuals engaged in political blogging, investigating how elites and other individuals use blogs in the context of politics, and examines what they hope to gain from it. The larger question at hand is whether and how political blogging facilitates civic engagement and mobilization in the United States. Do political bloggers encourage their readers to undertake political activities, and how do they go about doing so? Examining the activity of a diverse spectrum of bloggers, Pole concludes that blogging is indeed a new and important form of political participation, one that can potentially transform politics and lead to increased civic engagement.