Blogosphere

Blogosphere

Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.

The term was coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke. It was re-coined in 2002 by William Quick, and was quickly adopted and propagated by the warblog community. The term resembles the older word logosphere (from Greek logos meaning word, and sphere, interpreted as world), the "the world of words", the universe of discourse.

Despite the term's humorous intent, CNN, the BBC, and National Public Radio's programs Morning Edition, Day To Day, and All Things Considered have used it several times to discuss public opinion. A number of media outlets in recent years have started treating the blogosphere as a gauge of public opinion, and it has been cited in both academic and non-academic work as evidence of rising or falling resistance to globalization, voter fatigue, and many other phenomena, and also in reference to identifying influential bloggers and "familiar strangers" in the blogosphere.

Sites such as Technorati, BlogPulse, Tailrank, and BlogScope track the interconnections between bloggers. Taking advantage of hypertext links which act as markers for the subjects the bloggers are discussing, these sites can follow a piece of conversation as it moves from blog to blog. These also can help information researchers study how fast a meme spreads through the blogosphere, to determine which sites are the most important for gaining early recognition. Sites also exist to track specific blogospheres, such as those related by a certain genre, culture, subject matter or geopolitical location.

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New Zealand blogosphere

New Zealand's blogosphere is a small community of around 600 blogs that comment largely on New Zealand politics, society and occurrences.

Unlike overseas counterparts, both Rodney Hide and Frogblog allow comments.

Numerous politicians began blogs during the 2005 election, but these have since died.

A number of political pressure groups have blogs also.

Many political activists in New Zealand maintain blogs.

A 2007 New Zealand Herald article by Bill Ralston described political bloggers as being potentially the most powerful "opinion makers" in New Zealand politics. A few weeks earlier the National Business Review had stated that "Any realistic "power list" produced in this country would include either Farrar or his fellow blogger and opinion leader Russell Brown.". And in 2008 The Press stated that this years election "could be the time when New Zealand's burgeoning political bloggers finally make their presence felt". The article saw the increasing influence of the Internet (as opposed to television and radio) on peoples lives and the number of professional journalists now maintaining blogs as the reason for the blogospheres increased significance, alongside the fact that unlike newspapers blogs can link directly to facts and sources. The blogosphere has also make an impart on parliament, Russell Brown is quoted as saying "Every now and then you see a line from the blog turn up in a parliamentary speech." and in December 2007 then prime minister Helen Clark accused political journalists of "rushing to judgment" on their blogs.

Tim Selwyn, an Auckland man convicted of sedition in 2006, is also a prominent blogger, often bringing up controversial points. The pamphlet for which he was convicted and imprisoned on a charge of sedition was published on his website. Selwyn was also criticised in parliament for sending letters about his prison experiences to his co-blogger Martyn 'Bomber' Bradbury who posted them on the blog.

In August 2006, Sunday News revealed a blog site set up by Wellington-based national socialist Nic Miller after personal details of four Jewish families living in the city were posted on it. The details were later removed from the site.

In January 2007 another controversial blog, "CYFS Watch" appeared. The blog's stated aim was unveiling examples of alleged incompetence by the Child Youth and Family Service (known by its acronym CYFS) of the Ministry of Social Development. The Ministry responded to the publication of the blog, which published the details of several social workers, by complaining to internet company Google. The blog remained online until 22 February 2007 when Google deleted the site, due to the blog's anonymous author making death threats towards Green MP Sue Bradford as a result of her Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline) Amendment Bill 2005 .

The majority of bloggers still rely upon the media for the provision of news stories to comment upon. However, they do not repeat the news, instead putting forward their viewpoint on it. The Mainstream media at first was highly critical of bloggers, in January 2007 The New Zealand Herald printed an editorial that stated "ost bloggers - and we're talking 95 per cent - are fly-by-night, gutless wonders who prefer to spit inarticulate venom under inarticulate pseudonyms." Since then though the newspaper has picked up multiple stories first broken on blogs (see below).

Some current and former bloggers have worked in or for the media industry, such as: Russell Brown, Keith Ng, Tze Ming Mok and Dave Crampton.

There have been many notable examples of bloggers breaking news stories, and then having the media pick it up. For instance, Idiot/Savant discovered that neither Rodney Hide nor Heather Roy had been showing up to Parliament, and consequently, the ACT party had not voted in the 2006 budget debate. The story was subsequently picked up by The Dominion Post and The New Zealand Herald. In February 2008 a blog post by Russell Brown about the Wikipedia article on Bill English being edited from a computer at parliament received coverage in the New Zealand Herald. The story had first been broken on The Standard a blog with links to the Labour Party. A similar story was that of a computer at Air New Zealand being used to edit the Wikipedia article on Air New Zealand Flight 901 which was first mentioned on NZBC and later picked up by The Press.. In April 2008, blogger David Farrar revealed the Green Party's preliminary party list. The story was subsequently picked up by NZPA and published on Stuff. In June blogger 'Skinny' made the discovery that a photo used in in promotional material about the 2008 budget was of an American family, not a New Zealand one, the story was then published in The Herald.

There are numerous non-political blogs. They range from music blogs to group blogs to personal blogs.

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Canadian blogosphere

Canadian blogosphere is used to describe the online predominantly English Canadian community of weblogs that is part of the larger blogosphere.

Canada has one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world. Of Canadian internet users, a recent poll suggested that over 42% had read a blog in the previous three months.

Though Canadians compose blogs on many topics, weblogs of a political nature have a particularly high visibility in Canada. Former prime minister Paul Martin kept a high-profile blog during his campaign for leadership of the Liberal Party. Monte Solberg kept a widely read blog while he was in opposition, but ended blogging after being named Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Former Jean Chrétien advisor, Warren Kinsella's blog enjoys a similarly high profile. The contents of political blogs have been used to both defend and attack politicians in Parliament. Canadian comedian Rick Mercer also keeps a blog that frequently pokes fun at Canadian politicians.

Jim Elve of Blogs Canada was the first to create a directory of Canadian blogs. After developing a rich ecosystem of individual bloggers in the early 2000s, the political part of the Canadian blogosphere began to organize itself into larger groupings based on broad political ideology (left-right politics), party alignment (New Democratic Party, Liberal, Conservative) and geographical location (province or city). Membership in several groups is common.

The largest political blog group are the right leaning Blogging Tories with 300 blogs and 3,000 readers on average every day. More recently, Liberal and NDP bloggers, many of whom are Progressive Bloggers, have joined to create Liblogs and New Democrats Online. The environmental Green Bloggers have about 90 Canadian Bloggers. There is also a group of non-partisan Canadian bloggers, committed to no particular party, called The Blogging Alliance of Non-Partisan Canadians. There are also a number of regional blog groups, although most are non-political.

MP Garth Turner's blog is one of two active blogs by Canadian MPs. He was suspended from the Conservative caucus amid allegations of breaching caucus confidentiality on his blog. MP David L. Anderson also has a blog focusing on Western Canadian agricultural issues.

Canadian bloggers in their role as citizen journalists also hold elected politicians up to increased scrutiny. The How'd They Vote? website, set up by blogger Cory Horner mines Hansard for MP's voting history, attendance records and number of words spoken in Parliament. New Democrat MP Pat Martin said this website was "serving a public function" and "motivating MPs to do a better job." Liberal MP Paul Szabo was determined to be the "parliamentary windbag” of the 38th Parliament with 107,873 words spoken.

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Instapundit

Instapundit is a United States political blog produced by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee. It is one of the most widely read political blogs. The blog began in August 2001 as an experiment and a part of Reynolds' class on Internet law.

Because of his long-standing prominence in the political blogosphere and his efforts to encourage new bloggers, Reynolds is sometimes called the BlogFather. A 2007 memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee described him as one of the five "best-read national conservative bloggers," though Reynolds does not describe his views as conservative.

Instapundit frequently covers the "War on Terrorism" from a largely supportive viewpoint. Other common topics are technology (such as nanotechnology, space exploration, and digital photography), individual liberty, Gun politics, domestic policy, the media, and the blogosphere as a social phenomenon. Reynolds has recently lent his support to the Porkbusters campaign.

Much of InstaPundit's content consists of links to other sites, often with brief comments. (His frequent use of "heh," "indeed," and "read the whole thing" have been widely imitated and often parodied by other bloggers.) Reynolds encourages readers to explore the wider blogosphere and to fully read articles and posts to which he links. Since 2005, Reynolds has at times added original video reports, shot documentary-style, to the site. He covered the 2005 BlogNashville convention using video he shot himself.

In January 2006, Reynolds began to host podcasts from Instapundit, with his wife Helen Smith (who hosts discussion of the podcasts on her blog, "Dr. Helen"). Reynolds aggressively promotes the idea that bloggers, using now widely available tools such as digital audio and video, will eventually force more established news media to adapt a more agile approach to providing information, though he does not believe that "that blogs will replace Big Media".

In 2007, Network theory researchers who studied blogs as a test case found that Instapundit was the #1 blog for "quickly know about important stories that propagate over the blogosphere".

Reynolds, who worked for Al Gore's 1988 campaign, now largely agrees with mainstream Republican positions on major issues such as the war in Iraq, tax cuts, health care, illegal immigration, and the environment. He often criticizes Republicans for wasteful government spending. His association with the conservative side of U.S. politics includes a book-signing at the 2006 Conservative Political Action Conference.

In October 2006, Reynolds was attacked by Rush Limbaugh over several days for posting a "GOP Pre-mortem" suggesting that the Republicans deserved to lose the 2006 Congressional elections.

Reynolds often blogs in support of Porkbusters, which he helped create. He has vigorously criticized politicians from both parties for pork barrel spending and earmarking, which led then-Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss) to say that he was "damned tired" of Porkbusters.

Reynolds has testified before Congressional committees on space law, international trade, and domestic terrorism. He has also served as executive chairman for the National Space Society, and was once a member of the White House Advisory Panel on Space Policy.

Reynolds is co-author of Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy and The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society. He is also the author of An Army of Davids., a New York Times bestseller.

Reynolds also writes articles for various publications (generally under his full name, Glenn Harlan Reynolds): Popular Mechanics, Forbes, The New York Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He has written for the TCSDaily.com, Fox News and MSNBC websites as well.

Reynolds has written for the Columbia Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Wisconsin Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Law and Policy in International Business, Jurimetrics, and the High Technology Law Journal, among others.

Instapundit's early popularity led to the common adoption of the suffix "-pundit" in blog titles, for example Kevin Drum (who originally blogged as "CalPundit") and Allahpundit. There are many other "-pundit" blogs of all political stripes. An extensive listing of blogs inspired to some degree by Instapundit may be found here.

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