Is Blogging a Social Movement that will change the political culture
Minnesota, a relatively small state in population, may be one of the leading U.S. states in the production of bloggers. After all, TIME designated Minnesota-based Powerlineblog as the "Blog of the Year." That's no surprise, given that blog's central role in the "Rathergate" dustup that produced even more mistrust of what has been dubbed "the MSM" (mainstream media).

The success of the Powerlineblog guys has, of course, drawn a lot of attention in Minnesota, both from an informal group called the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (see Fraters Libertas for the roster), and now from the local newspapers.

Paying particular attention to Powerlineblog is Nick Coleman, an opinion columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Coleman took out his poison pen to comment on Powerlineblog, and the three-man blogging team responds here, here, and here. (Admittedly, it would be nice to have links to Coleman's work, but they are behind a corporate firewall. In a week or so, you will have to pay to get access to the articles.)

A SOCIAL MOVEMENT?
One of the most intriguing classes to grace my graduate school career of years ago was a seminar on social movements. It was an informative yet unusual course, at least as measured by my curriculum. The academic focus of nearly every participant in the seminar (including the professor) was the politics of sexual identity. ("The personal is the political," you know.)

At least at the time, the various arguments in play agreed that a social movement must by definition challenge something about the status quo, preferably social norms or political expectations. A social movement is a challenge to some existing power. Feminism is a social movement, but, theologically and socially conservative churches that teach traditional sex roles are not, for example. Or a collection of anti-war protests may be signs of a social movement, but a demonstration in support of an ongoing war is not a social movement.

So as you might expect, there's room for some political posturing in deciding what is a social movement and what is not. (TIME, for example, asserted in the same issue that conservatives rule the country, an assertion that will find some vigorous dissent among libertarian-leaning conservatives, the political lineup in Washington, DC notwithstanding.)

To bring this post to a premature end, the argument could be made that blogs are a new social movement, because they change expectations about the world. They challenge an existing power (mainstream media) to boot, particularly its ability to frame the issues of the day. The notion of what constitutes journalism, and what we expect of it, has implications for the political debate.

Do a Google search for the terms "blogs," "social movement" and "MSM,” and you will find roughly 90 hits.

Maybe that’s grist for an article sometime. While the implications of blogging for the political culture or public policy are still not fully played out, they are worth watching. (permalink)