Blogs as political bellwethers
Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, David Perlmutter writes about how he has been adding blogs to his stable of sources for information with a political twist, and is asking how these sites will "play in future campaigns and elections." Of course, we got a first glimpse at how blogs and other online media such as forums (still the leader, if you start sourcing where most popular blogs get their information from) have an impact on the political process, but what I think is the more important question, going forward, is how the evolution of blogs and new media tools in the last few years since the 2004 presidential election will herald even more changes in the process.
For those who have been on the scene before that election season, we've been privy to everything from seeing those blogs have much lessened traffic numbers after the election (probably just like any other media) to hearing about how government entities wanted to regulate speech on the Internet as donations. Most of those things are old hat now, so what's going to be exciting is to see what comes next. Will some new tool show up that will make us all wake up - again - or will we be privy to such an amassing of online commentary that it will all become cluttered?
[via reverseswim on del.icio.us]
