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July 29, 2005

Gatekeepers and Keeping Score

American Digest has a thought-provoking essay on how blogs are becoming more like traditional media: we're evolving gatekeepers that strongly influence what's covered in the blogs. Well worth a read, and too much good stuff to excerpt. I think that Gerard Van der Leun's thesis is right, for a large part of the blogosphere: it's necessary to have someplace to go to find out the gist of what's going on, and sites like Instapundit (it's that near the top of my blogroll for a reason) and Kos are great places to find that. It should be noted, though, that this is primarily true in the politically-obsessed part of the blogosphere, which is already, and will become more so, a shrinking part of the total blogosphere.

But I think that even the political blogosphere has more to it than that. Perhaps Van der Leun is speaking only within the context of media and political blogging - both of which he is a part of - and to that extent I have no alteration to make. But even within that world, it's not that simple. There are three factors that the blogs have that are critical: depth, breadth and reconsideration.

Depth comes from there being so many blogs. While there are a top tier of maybe 1000 right-wing and perhaps 200 left-wing blogs (drawing roughly equal traffic between the groups) and a few dozen centrist blogs that draw high traffic, there are a lot more blogs sitting below the surface. These blogs tend to form koinons, which discuss certain topics and matters amongst themselves. When these reach a critical point, or become part of a larger context, the big blogs take note and incorporate those elements through the magic of hyperlinks. And this draws more people into those lower-traffic koinons, as they are discovered by new readers.

Breadth comes from the fact that many blogs require many authors. Each of those authors has a particular life story, particular training and particular skills. I am, for example, an expert on identity management, information security, directory services, UNIX systems, and enterprise-level systems integration; and as an IT consultant for several years, I've worked with a wide variety of companies and people in a wide variety of places. I have some hobbies and areas of interest that intersect with other blogs (in fact, I originally became interested in blogs because of Transterrestrial Musings (mostly about space) and became determined to blog by reading Steven Den Beste (mostly political analysis, and sadly dormant). I am a husband, and father of four boys. I was born in Okinawa and spent much of the early part of my life in SE Asia and Europe. All of this taken together gives me a particular voice.

There are experts on so many areas, and people who live in so many places, who write blogs, that any issue has an instant set of experts to comment on it. These, too, find their way into the top-traffic blogs as the relevant issues arise. These people all have their own voices, such as the Christian pastor who used to be in the military, or the gay, Republican author of computer books or my wife (who mainly writes about homeschooling and family issues, with a more active comment section than mine).

The third feature of blogs that is critical is reconsideration. This just means that issues can be - and are - revisited over time. Issues don't entirely die in the blogosphere until and unless there is consensus, which as far as I can tell will never happen. What this means in real terms is that reputations are sticky, and in part they are based on people's willingness to change their minds when they figure out they were wrong. People look at the partisan blogs, but generally only if they really agree or really disagree with them. I'd rather read Winds of Change or Balloon Juice, which which I sometimes agree and sometimes do not, than read the partisan blogs. Part of the reason is that the partisan blogs are stuck on their positions as premises, and rarely change them, except when it's politically expedient. The reason that reconsideration is critical, though, is that except for the partisan blogs, issues will eventually gravitate to one or two opinion sets (eg: CBS used obviously fake documents in Rathergate because they were out to get the President and couldn't be bothered to be responsible journalists; or CBS used obviously fake documents in Rathergate because they were duped by a source they trusted). In other words, as new evidence comes in and those who are not emotionally invested in a position change their minds, over time there is a coalescence around a generally-accepted set of facts.

I do think a lot of people are overly obsessed by traffic: what matters to me, though, is not traffic but comments and discussion. I care about comments. I care about trackbacks. (And thanks to Technorati and the Ecosystem - when they work - it's possible to find other people talking about the same topics, but who don't have trackbacks from their sites.) Right now, I'm engaged in a wonderful discussion about polytheism on a post I did on the pantheism and Wiccan cosmology. That matters to me. Others are, of course, welcome to obsess over how many visits per day they get (I checked, and I get about 1500 visits a day on average, which is just utterly wonderful).

UPDATE: Francis Porretto has observations on the same essay.

Oh, and I fixed the spelling of Gerard Van der Leun. Mea maxima culpa.

Posted by jeff at July 29, 2005 11:43 PM

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» The Koinonia of Blogdom from AMERICAN DIGEST
JEFF METCALF @ Caerdroia expands on my small essay earlier this week, Fear of Instalinking by taking a closer look at three factors that the blogs have that are critical: depth, breadth and reconsideration. Of particular interest is his citation of the... [Read More]

Tracked on July 30, 2005 10:19 AM

» The Koinonia of Blogdom from AMERICAN DIGEST
UPDATES AND COMMENTARY ON THIS ISSUE @ The Glittering Eye: Why Glenn doesn't blogroll Vanderleun and Caerdroia: Blogrolling Blog-Pods discussed at AmbivaBlog Visual aid from ZenPundit's Koinon Diagrams ========= JEFF MEDCALF @ Caerdroia expands on my s... [Read More]

Tracked on July 30, 2005 4:53 PM

Comments

Posted by: Karl Gallagher at July 30, 2005 8:07 AM

Posted by: Vanderleun at July 30, 2005 10:21 AM

Posted by: Brian at August 1, 2005 1:05 AM