Labour blog explosion: I’ll take the Slow Road
A recent column by Mike Ion on Comment is Free - picked up via Iain Dale about “Power Blogging” suggested that there would soon be an explosion of political blogging on the left - in tandem with the Labour Party Deputy Leadership election:
Left of centre political blogging is on the rise and could be a big factor in deciding the outcome of Labour’s deputy leadership election.
Mike cites Tim Montgomery:
Tim Montgomery, who runs Conservative Home are predicting that 2007 will be the year when Labour blogging (and bloggers) comes of age.
Start blogs, then wait a year
I think an “explosion” is unlikely. An explosion is a very rapid expansion - and that is not how blogging works. The Slow Food movement is a better analogy. Good blogging takes time - and that is one of its key advantages.
Blogs are built like an electorate in a Council or Parliamentary seat - as a slow, steady, trickle over a long period of time.
It is possible that the Labour blogosphere may lay down the the foundations of an expansion in the current period of intense political interest, and many new blogs started or new readers turn to existing blogs.
I’ll take the Slow Road
However, a blogging expansion will also take long time to become visible to the wider Internet as there are a number of specific factors that slow down the process:
- Political blogging is like a distributed online version of the “Westminster village” - a small community where everyone knows each other. To have an impact on the wider society, we need to break out of the ghetto. It is still an conversation between insiders.
- Blogs become visible when they have a base of material to draw on - which can mean from 100 to 500 posts. It takes time to build up a base of articles of this size.
- It takes time for a blog to become visible through Google - which usually means at least 6 months.
The Risks of Rushing
If anyone does attempt to drive an expansion of blogs quicker than is natural, there is the risk that the quality of the writing and the ensuing debate will be “thin” - lacking substance.
Further, those who rush into the blogosphere without taking time to listen and then engage have a habit of looking foolish. To put it more colourfully:
“You will resemble a class of Japanese language students in Cambridge, who are out on their bikes for the first time in their lives, and who have all just gone the wrong way round a traffic island and are too terrified to go back.”
Further Articles
I will explore the questions raised above in more detail in further articles, and look at some technorati and google data for particular blogs.
Tags: Political Blogging, Labour Bloggers, Labourhome, Mike Ion, Blogosphere, Politics, Matt Wardman, Deputy Leadership, Tim Montgomery
[tags]Political Blogging, Labour Bloggers, Labourhome, Mike Ion, Iain Dale, Blogosphere, Politics, Matt Wardman, Deputy Leadership, Tim Montgomery[/tags]
Article Series - Labour Blog Explosion
- Labour blog explosion: I’ll take the Slow Road
- Political Blogging: What Measurements to Use
- Labour Blog Explosion? Crunching the Numbers
I don’t mean to sound elitist, but blogging isn’t for everyone, both from the publisher’s and reader’s perspectives. The ‘explosion’ you mention will be on the publishing side, and not so much as with the reaching of a wider new audience. We’re lagging behind in terms of non-work related Internet usage (and by extension, broadband penetration rates), for starters, and a blog’s success rate is determined by the reach of its audience (size matters just as much as the participation rate, due to the conversational nature of the blogosphere).
Britain simply doesn’t have the audience that sustains blogging like we see in the US. Iain Dale’s site, which is supposedly the #1 blog in the British political arena, gets fewer than 20k unique daily visits. Compare this to DailyKos in the US, which gets almost a million a day. You’re spot on about us experiencing the joy of welcoming thousands of new Labour-leaning blogs into the fold in the coming months, but it won’t make a difference in the real-world if only 10 unique visitors check the sites out on a daily basis.
At any rate - I look forward to gleaning more insight from your series.
Cheers,
jag
Jag - thanks for your comment.
I have the following further observations:
As you say - “where will the readers come from” is a key question. I think we are still in a strong growth phase - Iain Dale’s uniques/pages figures in Feb were 180,000/312,000. Daily Kos were roughtl 14 million/17 million). Note: Iain Dale is up 600% in 12 months; Kos is almost flat by comparison.
I’d argue that Kos is a different animal to Iain Dale - it perhaps takes the place of our national papers - which don’t exist in we are small enough to have a national conversation. Perhaps a better comparison with the Guardian Online, but I have no figures.
I don’t think we have anything comparable to Kos - a prominent political group blog. Pickled Politics? Harry’s Place? Maybe in a couple of years.
The really big challenge is participatiion in local politics, which political blogging can only help if it gets through the “Google barrier”. I think that is the big one.
Matt
Matt
The point that I was trying to make was that the deputy leadership contest could help Labour blogging develop - I don’t think I used the term ‘explode’ nor did I choose the title of power bloggers (that was inserted by the Guardian sub-editor).
I was also trying to argue that blogs could help some (if not all) politicians reconnect with parts of the electorate - the more local, the more specific the blog the better.
Mike
Mike
Thanks for stopping by.
>The point that I was trying to make was that the deputy leadership contest could help Labour blogging develop - I don’t think I used the term ‘explode’
The term “explode” came from one of the commenters on your post. I agree with your substantive point.
>nor did I choose the title of power bloggers (that was inserted by the Guardian sub-editor
That sounds to me like an excellent reason for publishing things on blogs!
>I was also trying to argue that blogs could help some (if not all) politicians reconnect with parts of the electorate - the more local, the more specific the blog the better.
i agree there. This is a key point. I’d add 2 requirements:
1 - Accessible policy dialogue
2 - Lack of censorship.
For an example of 2 try the Shrewsbury Unitary authority case:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/shropshire/6262921.stm
In addition to the chap being suspended, comments on a blog were also deleted. How do we implant honesty and principles into politicians?
Rgds
Matt
I think a problem here is that people talk about traffic as if readership, in itself, means anything. What are they reading? How are the political points being made being more readily turned into the policies that motivated the original blogger?
And I can’t help feeling that, considering we’re a supposedly collectivist Party/organisation, people are being rather individualistic. A lot of bloggers seem to want to try to reinvent the wheel in isolation, when there are existing blogs/campaigns that they could join. Perhaps this is a fatal incompatibility between blogging Labourites and real-world campaigning - the social networks we once depended upon are not present online, and eschewed in the blogosphere. I must say I’m thinking along these lines. At some point this online interest has to be directed to the real world of meetings, socials, and donations.
I do approve of our “long tail” - many low-traffic, local bloggers - because I see it as more democratic, and - providing communication channels are open - it’s the best way to bring information in, and disseminate it quickly. The Iain Dale model is a poor model from a Conservative campaigning point of view (or, indeed, any other).
Can I throw a proposition in:
1 - In a broadly collectivist organisation (e.g., Labour), the role of blogs/bloggers can be as a foil to the dominant centre, e.g., to give a voice to parts of the grass roots that are not currently prominent centrally.
2 - On the other hand, in a broadly individualistic setup (e.g., Tories), blogs and bloggers can have a role more to provide networks for communication among individuals.
Perhaps blogs (or bloggers) are naturally contrarian.
Maybe it is not a coincidence that the bloggers who should in theory be individualists are better organised collectively? I’m thinking of Conservative Home rather than Iain Dale - which I view more as an ongoing column without a newspaper.
Matt
Traffic and Targeting
>I do approve of our “long tail” - many low-traffic, local bloggers - because I see it as more democratic, and - providing communication channels are open - it’s the best way to bring information in, and disseminate it quickly.
>I think a problem here is that people talk about traffic as if readership, in itself, means anything. What are they reading? How are the political points being made being more readily turned into the policies that motivated the original blogger?
I think these two points are related.
I see traffic as distribution - i.e., like having a good attendance at your AGM to make sure you have a good range of views. So I think that readership does mean something.
I agree on the long tail too - and I’d put an emphasis on being aware of the audience targetted by a particular blog. To put it another way, the same disciplines that apply to political campaigning on the street - know your audience, and apply your message to their interests - also applies to blogs. The difference is that part of the toolkit needs to come from areas such as online marketing and understanding online communications.
I’d register one strong note of disagreement - blogs simply *are* part of real world campaigning.
Matt
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