Page 68 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Blogosphere: Pol t cs and Internet Journal sm |

in newspapers. Just so, the craving to participate in political debates remained
intact, though the debates were removed to distant locations. Not surprisingly,
then, when the blogs appeared, they provided an outlet for pent-up energies and
emotions—expanding, as a result, with a vigor that surprised almost everyone,
but particularly those politicians and members of the press who had become
increasingly distant from the American population.

whaT is a BLog?
A blog (from “Web log”) is an interactive Web page that allows an individual
to post entries that are immediately available for viewing (and, sometimes, for
comment) on the World Wide Web. Blogs evolved from online bulletin boards
where people could participate in “conversations” through posts and responses.
One main difference from the “bulletin boards” is that anyone can create their
own blog, and for free (unless they want a fancier one), controlling both look
and access. Another is that the blogs tend to be more flexible and responsive to
the individual than earlier forums for Internet discussion.
People blog on all sorts of topics, but the best-known blogs tend to be those
concerned with political issues. The most popular of all are the group political
blogs, where anyone can join, presenting their own diaries and commenting on
the diaries of others. In general, these tend to attract the like-minded—one of
the greatest criticisms of them is that they tend to stifle debate within them by
hounding out those (often called “trolls”) whose viewpoints are different from
the mainstream of the particular blog. Because of their real similarities, political
blogs, whether right wing or left, were soon referred to in the commercial news
media as “the blogs” rather than simply as blogs, giving them a sense of being a
single, coherent force which, in fact, they never have been.

Free rePuBliC

Who reads FR?
Over 200,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic since incep-
tion in 1996 and our forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patri-
ots from all around the country and all around the world. Oh, we’re big stuff all right. . . .
Who runs Free Republic?
Free Republic, LLC is a non-commercial, limited liability company founded and operated
by Jim Robinson, a private citizen of Fresno California.
Free Republic is not a for profit commercial enterprise in the sense of a traditional busi-
ness selling a product or service at a profit for its shareholders. We sell no product or ser-
vice. We have no clients, customers or employees. We do not accept paid advertising. Free
Republic is not affiliated with any political party, group, news source, government agency or
anyone else.
Supporters of the Blogs
Many political bloggers see their movement as a “netroots” or grassroots movement that
is trying to wrest political control from the “inside the beltway” politicians of Washington,