Blog Wars is a documentary taking a look at how bloggers influenced the political debate in the state of Connecticut. It’s 58 minutes long and covers some interesting points but that’s not what I’m going to write about. For me what was interesting was seeing who was present.
For a start I didn’t expect for the venue to be full. I expected to see only a few people but that wasn’t the case. Most of them didn’t look like bloggers. Their phones weren’t out to tweet and their laptops weren’t in site. From the questions I think this assessment is correct.
I’m going to use my twitter notes in order to bring out some of the points I thought could be of interest. My first comment was about people sounding passive rather than active about blogging. In other words they are looking at the process of blogging as readers rather than producers of content. This is interesting since the cost is low for blogging. One of those involved in the production of this documentary did tell me at the end of the session that he loved reading blogs but that it was far too time consuming for him to write anything.
A second point that was made is that of deep linking. Someone in the crowd brought up the comment that whilst in Mainstream media all the information must be prepared in advanced and accurate with blogs we get a person’s opinion and due to the ability to link to those documents or sources it is up to the blog reader to look at issues in more depth should he desire this.
Some attention was placed on the forged document about Bush’s record but not much of note was mentioned.
A question about the difference between British and US blogging was brought up and it was brought up that US blogging is far more fun and exciting than that of England because of the debates. There was also a comment about how the tabloid press in England can already dissent against those in influential positions. As an aside to this attention was brought to how blogs are helping to chart Brown’s deciline from public favour.
Some time was taken to see just how influential blogging can be and there was a feeling that had the Swift Boat story in the US been taken more seriously and had the issue of forged documentaries been followed up the impact would have been far greater. One of the problems with bloggers was that one woman doctored an image which meant a loss of credibility for one of the candidates.
I was amused by one person’s comment about how blogging is live and instant when I’ve already seen the efforts made by twitter users during the New Hampshire and other primary votes in which Barak Obama got a clear lead. Anyone remember Obama girl… some blogs showed why he progressed in the polls. (Look these details up. This is simply a summary and commentary). The point is that Twitter may play an important role over the next few months so people should keep an eye on this new method of disseminating information.
Overall the conversation was interesting and it felt good to have experience of the topic discussed. I’ll look forward to more of these events.