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Abstract
Political bloggers occupy a unique and influential position in determining whether an online political video attracts attention from Internet users, journalists, and politicians. Despite the central role that bloggers play in the process of filtering online videos, however, there have been no systematic empirical studies of the kinds of videos that political bloggers choose to link to on their blogs. Using the data derived from 100 randomly selected political blogs during the last 2 months of the 2008 campaign, this article presents evidence that political bloggers are willing to post videos produced by a diverse array of sources, ranging from highly polished advertisements filmed by interest groups to footage recorded by ordinary citizens using cell phone cameras. Perhaps more importantly, the author finds strong support for the hypothesis that political bloggers will avoid posting videos that challenge their ideological predispositions and, instead, link only to those videos that confirm what they already believe to be true. More specifically, the data presented here show that political bloggers rarely engage in cross-ideological linking and have a strong preference for videos that disparage the actions and statements of their highest-profile political opponents. Political bloggers, in other words, engage in the type of ideologically motivated filtering of online videos that presents readers with a decidedly one-sided and negative view of those who do not share their political beliefs.
Notes
According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (2008), 52 percent of the public said they regularly watch local television news, 39 percent said they regularly watch cable television news, 33 percent said they read newspapers regularly, and 10 percent said they regularly or sometimes read blogs about politics or current events.
While blog discussion is certainly important in diffusing online political videos, it is certainly not the only avenue for people to learn about an online political video. Indeed, e-mail, instant messages, and social network communications with friends and family are also methods by which people hear about new and interesting political videos. Recent surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, for example, have found that 75 percent of online video viewers have received links to online videos via e-mail or instant messages (Madden Citation2007) and that 9 percent of Internet users have forwarded or posted someone else's political recordings using e-mail or instant messages (Smith and Rainie Citation2008). Similarly, Robertson et al. (Citation2009) found that links to YouTube were more common than links to any other site on the Facebook “walls” of presidential candidates during the 2008 campaign, suggesting that social networking sites may be an important mechanism by which Internet users inform each other of new and exciting online political videos.
Davis did find, however, that journalists were more likely to read liberal blogs than conservative blogs.
Consistent with this general body of research, a number of case studies on specific issues have shown that blog discussion can exert a small but significant influence on mainstream media coverage. Schiffer (Citation2006), for example, found that liberal blog discussion of the Downing Street memo led to more mainstream media coverage of the issue, and Heim (Citation2008) found that A-list political blogs exerted a significant impact on news stories about the Iraq War.
Greenberg thinks blogs are so important to creating a viral video success that he even suggests paying bloggers to post videos on their sites.
A large number of scholars have challenged the evidence in favor of this so-called demobilization hypothesis. See, for example, Finkel and Geer (Citation1998), Kahn and Kenney (Citation1999), and Wattenberg and Brians (Citation1999).
Once a blog in the Technorati database is claimed by its author, the blogger is allowed to categorize the blog however he or she sees fit (http://technorati.com/blog-claiming-faq).
Technorati's directory of “U.S. Politics” blogs includes many blogs that focus little to no attention on politics. As a result, I reviewed each randomly selected blog to ensure that it was, in fact, focused on American politics and excluded from the sample any blog that was concerned primarily with the arts, literature, technology, or the personal life of the blogger. In addition, I excluded any blogs that were written by organizations or news outlets.
Because this study is focused only on American political blogs, I excluded from the sample any blog written by an author living outside of the United States. In order to determine the location of a blog's author, three steps were taken. First, many blogs include a location heading in their sidebar that mentions the city and country where the blogger resides. If a blog included a location heading that mentioned a country that was not the United States, it was not included in the sample. Second, many blogs include links to the blogger's profile, which mentions where the blogger lives. If a blog included a link to a profile that mentioned the blogger lived in a country that was not the United States, it was not included in the sample. Finally, I checked the text of the blog itself for mentions of the blogger's place of residence. If the blogger mentioned living in a place that was not the United States, the blog was not included in the sample.
A complete list of the political blogs included in the sample and the video URLs taken from these blogs is available from the author upon request.
In order to code for the ideology of the blog, I took four steps. First, I checked the title of the blog for references to ideology or political partisanship. Many political blogs include some reference to their ideology or partisanship in the title of their blog. Second, I checked the blog's introductory description for statements of ideological or partisan preferences. Many political bloggers use a blogging software feature that allows the blogger to write a short statement of purpose or summary of their blog to express their ideological beliefs. Third, I checked the content of the blog itself for statements of opinion about the election. If a blog made an outright statement of preference about the outcome of the election, such as “please let Obama win,” “please defeat Obama,” “vote for Obama,” or “vote against Obama,” I coded the blog for the direction of that statement. Finally, I checked the sidebar of each blog for links to explicitly partisan or ideological Web sites.
The percentage of agreement for two coders was 98 percent.
There were small but interesting ideological differences in bloggers’ tendency to point readers to online videos. Conservative bloggers linked to videos in a significantly higher percentage of their overall posts than did liberal bloggers (14 to 11 percent), and a larger percentage of conservative blogs used at least one online video in their political discussions between September 1 and November 4, 2008 (89 to 85 percent).
The specific details of the coding scheme used to categorize each video are available from the author upon request.
The percentage of agreement for two coders on this dimension was 88.6 percent.
The content political bloggers linked to was, without exception, politically oriented. David Letterman's admonishment of John McCain for suspending his campaign, Tina Fey's impersonations of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, and The Daily Show's coverage of the Republican National Convention were particularly popular videos for political bloggers to post on their blogs.
The percentage of agreement for two coders on this dimension was 87.6 percent.
The percentage of agreement for two coders on this dimension was 83.5 percent.
An analysis of variance showed that this difference was statistically significant (p < .001).
Smith (2008), for example, finds that 33 percent of Internet users say they read blogs. From a somewhat different perspective, Jones and Fox (Citation2009) find evidence that younger generations are more likely to read blogs than older generations, indicating that generational replacement will lead to growing readership in the blogosphere.
A recent study conducted by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (2004) showed that so-called online political citizens—who engage in activities such as joining Web site discussion groups, reading political blogs, and making political contributions over the Internet—are “nearly seven times more likely than average citizens to serve as opinion leaders among their friends, relatives, and colleagues” (p. 3).
Wallsten (2007b) finds that political bloggers, regardless of popularity or ideology, rarely used their blog posts to attempt to mobilize political action during the 2004 election campaign.
This is not to assume that there is only one path to producing a viral political video. If there are many different ways for a video to attract an online audience, mainstream media coverage, and attention from politicians, positive videos may not need blogger support to “go viral.”