The Two Political Blogospheres
Pittsburgh, PA (wikimedia)
I don’t really understand why conservatives insist on holding their blogger conference in the city same as ours on the same week. It just seems to invite unflattering comparisons. Here’s Timothy McNulty from the Post-Gazette:
Even though conservatives are holding their own convention of online activists in Pittsburgh this week, they are not trying to directly compete with the giant Netroots Nation. If they did, they would be squashed.
The RightOnline conference starting tomorrow morning at the Sheraton Station Square will have about a quarter of the 2,000 attendees at the liberal conference in the convention center, and only about 20 speakers to the 400 at Netroots. Liberals are throwing multiple parties at the Warhol and a gay-lesbian kiss-in. Conservatives end Friday night with a film criticizing Al Gore.
Basic demographics just make it way harder for the right to compete online. The over-60 demographic is a hotbed of conservative sentiments, but it’s also very disinclined to go online. The stereotype of progressive bloggers and blog readers as “young” tends to be wildly overstated, but what is true is that the online universe contains relatively few senior citizens, and the current version of the conservative coalition contains quite a lot of seniors.
32 Responses to “The Two Political Blogospheres”
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August 13th, 2009 at 9:18 am
It goes beyond age, though, doesn’t it? The disproportion described in the article is in excess of anything demographics would explain.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:21 am
It does appear to go beyond age. It has something to do with the medium itself. If they held a convention of talk radio fans, well, you’d get CPAC on the one hand, while progressives could fit in a broom closet.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:23 am
I think they’re going just because they want a sandwich from Primanti’s.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:25 am
I wonder if the medium itself creates unfair bars to entry for conservatives. Literacy?
August 13th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Writing as one who very closely follows all things Pittsburgh, I didn’t know about Right Online until I read about it this morning on the bus. I laughed. I’ve been critical about the lack of local coverage of Netroots Nation. G20 casts a long shadow and Librulz is scary, but at least NN got some ink and TV time.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Invite some of them over to the “gay-lesbian kiss-in.” They could use some lightening up.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am
It goes beyond age, though, doesn’t it? The disproportion described in the article is in excess of anything demographics would explain.
No doubt it’s also related to the fact that at the moment, right-wing ideas are about as popular as chlamydia. It doesn’t look like this is the case because they’re loud and have the support of moneyed interests and because the media is full of Broderites, but people really, actually don’t want to cut government spending during a recession. I’ll bet the competing conferences were more competitive in 2002 or 2004.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:50 am
“Indeed”
August 13th, 2009 at 9:54 am
@7 — Cyrus, I’m guessing you’re on the youthful side of the demographic. Neither of these conferences existed in 2002 or 2004. This is all quite recent.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:00 am
I’m 27. Sure, this is a recent thing, but my point stands.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:02 am
It is very simple why they hold it in the same city. The media started sending people to cover the Yearly Kos (now Netroot Nation) and so the conservatives started their own in the same city so that they could convince the press there to cover YK/NN to give them some coverage. If they went to a differant city or at a differant time there is a good chance they would get no media coverage at all.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:05 am
I think they’re just there for the kiss-in.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:07 am
What Nick said @#2. Conservatives have one important medium wrapped-up. Online is purely optional to them, just to say they have a presence.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:12 am
What are you talking about? There are obviously plenty of libertarians on the internet. Whether they can afford a flight to Pittsburgh, of course, is another question. (My guess is that most Galt wannabes are on pretty low rung themselves.)
August 13th, 2009 at 10:12 am
In most countries, this blog would hardly be left of the center. When the left is so right, there is not much wunder that whats left over at the right is very limited.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:21 am
People like the radio guy to lie to them and tell them they are the best person in a perfect country and all bad things are due to outsiders and saboteurs — it’s like mood music for morons. OTOH, people who look things up on the internet generally want some facts.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Conservatives have had the luxury for thirty years of having the radio and television commentators on their side. Many of us entered the Internet because our voices were not heard on radio and television. We knew how to type, knew information from reading–again because it was an outlet away from radio and television–and presto, the basis for a Netroots Nation appear.
Imagine the reverse and I think we’d have seen the same phenomenon or mostly the same phenomenon from the liberal and left elements.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:41 am
I will soon be covered by Medicare and spend lots of time online as do a whole heap of my “over 60″ friends and relatives, and a good chunk of them happen to be conservatives. Yeah, many of us still have parents alive and they aren’t online, so maybe that impacts the numbers. OTOH, I have no plans to be standing and/or walking staring down at a blackberry all day long;this desktop/laptop consumes enough of my time.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:47 am
[...] Matt Yglesias says it’s the demographics, stupid: The over-60 demographic is a hotbed of conservative sentiments, but it’s also very disinclined to go online. The stereotype of progressive bloggers and blog readers as “young” tends to be wildly overstated, but what is true is that the online universe contains relatively few senior citizens, and the current version of the conservative coalition contains quite a lot of seniors. [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 11:14 am
One thing I’ve noticed, from perusing both liberal and conservative blogs, is that on the liberal blogs you see a lot of arguing about issues, and quite a lot of disagreement between people about the best way to tackle certain issues. On conservative blogs they seem to be quite unified in their view of the issues, but will argue quite vehemently about politics and issues of messaging. Maybe its just a function of one side being out of power, but then again, maybe not.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:17 am
“People like the radio guy to lie to them and tell them they are the best person in a perfect country and all bad things are due to outsiders and saboteurs — it’s like mood music for morons.”
Perfect.
“OTOH, people who look things up on the internet generally want some facts.”
Even if they don’t, there’s those darn links that take directly to them: “AAAAGH! Our economy really does perform better under Democrats!”
August 13th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Basic demographics just make it way harder for the right to compete online.
I think this is (sadly) waaaayy overstated. It may be that “the right” is not competing as effectively as the left when it comes to writing and maintaining and promoting weblogs espousing their views. But it seems whenever I venture into the comment thread of a “neutral” site (eg, a newspaper or apolitical online newsmagazine) the righties are out in force. And then some. In that regard the success of the progressive blogosphere may be hurting us: liberals have lots of interesting places to go and discuss policy and politics, and so as a group (I suspect) we’re not as inclined to hit the comment thread of some newspaper or online magazine article. And so we’re outnumbered. My guess is the number of folks commenting on such threads far outnumbers the number of folks hitting the blogoshphere, so “centrist” readers I fear are exposed to right wing blather a lot more than they’re exposed to the reasoned, fact-based arguments of liberals.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Jasper, I’ve noticed that myself. Pick any random “neutral” politcal blog eg Politico, Jake Tapper, WaPo and it is at least 6:1 conservative to liberal. It is the same thing on the CBC’s website, where conservatives make up a tiny % of the readers, but a majority of the commenters.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Liberals dominate the internet for the same reason conservatives dominate talk radio. Each of those media functions in a manner that allows the flow of ideas and the relationships between leaders and masses in the manner that each political group desires.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I don’t think the different media are accidental. Talk radio has a one-way flow of information: Rush talks, dittoheads listen. The conservative authority-oriented worldview fits this perfectly. Low-ranking people don’t have any opinions worth noticing, so if the medium itself enforces the authority’s ability to shut them up, so much the better.
The blogosphere, on the other hand, is descended from USENET, which has always been about multilateral conversation and defending your points with evidence. (And now with hyperlinks, too – it’s no accident that no conservative has the reputation for supporting his claims with evidence that Glenn Greenwald does.) It’s much more difficult for an authority to propound bullshit and stop anyone else from pointing out that it is bullshit. (Even if you disable or censor comments – both rare among left-wing bloggers and common among right-wing ones – someone elsewhere in the blogosphere can still refute you.)
Liberals, in principle, *want* to have this kind of argument to hammer out the truth (even though any particular one, at any particular time, may be annoyed by people disagreeing with him). That’s why we’re drawn to a medium that facilitates it. Few liberals can afford to buy their own radio stations, but even if they could, if you want to hear what your audience has to say and believe that they could have good points you would benefit from hearing, then a blog is not only cheaper than a radio station, it’s actually *better*.
August 13th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
“the success of the progressive blogosphere may be hurting us: liberals have lots of interesting places to go and discuss policy and politics, and so as a group (I suspect) we’re not as inclined to hit the comment thread of some newspaper or online magazine article.”
Plus, it get wearying arguing with people who type “Hussein Socialist Obamahitler wants to take your guns away and kill your family. Stupid libtard.” and think that qualifies as actual argument.
August 13th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
[...] Matt Y.: Basic demographics just make it way harder for the right to compete online. The over-60 demographic is a hotbed of conservative sentiments, but it’s also very disinclined to go online. The stereotype of progressive bloggers and blog readers as “young” tends to be wildly overstated, but what is true is that the online universe contains relatively few senior citizens, and the current version of the conservative coalition contains quite a lot of seniors. [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I also think it is the one-way versus two-way thing that explains the difference.
August 13th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I think the dominance of the internet by left-leaning types has more to do with the opposite party being in power when the medium came of age. The media is generally pro-*establishment* above all else (whatever party that is), so it was only natural that the internet became a popular rallying place for the left-leaning.
It can’t be simply a question of demographics, otherwise the UK internet wouldn’t be so heavily skewed towards the right. That fact fits the hypothesis, as the left were in power in the UK across the internet’s period of rise.
August 13th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Nah. Conservatives have day jobs and can’t zoom off to junkets like this
August 13th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
‘…the UK internet wouldn’t be so heavily skewed towards the right…’ ; ‘the over-60 demographic is a hotbed of conservative sentiments, but it’s also very disinclined to go online’
I’m not buying into either one of those statements until I see proof. And even if the stats support this, and i would want to see these stats among likely or actual voters.
Having been around in the early 90’s as a late 20-something engineer and now having an entire family online and friends with entire families online, including mothers, grandparents and great grandparents I do not think the internet is a young persons ‘thing’. That is laughable.
It’s like a teenager thinking he or she is fooling their parents over the things they do – there’s not much new under the sun….
August 14th, 2009 at 4:40 am
meh .. i’m over 60 .. been online since ‘94 ..read you and FDL all teh time ..
take that .. young-un .. [/snark]