November 30, 2009
Posted by David Karpf
LGF quits conservatism: snap reaction
This will be a quick blog post, since I’m on the road and *extremely* tired. When my plane touched down an hour ago, I checked twitter to see the following message:
RT peterdaou: For those who’ve been following rt/left blogs for some time, 1 of the most dramatic switches is LGF http://bit.ly/5cgi2K
You can view the announcement yourself here. Two things to keep in mind when considering the fallout from this shift:
(1) Little Green Footballs is big in comparison to other conservation blogs. In 2007, when I started the Blogosphere Authority Index, it was the 3rd largest among elite conservative blogs. Last month, it was fifth largest. I don’t recall it ever being ranked lower than 9th. This would be the equivalent of Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, or Atrios in the progressive blogosphere announcing that they’d “parted ways with the Left.”
(2) Little Green Footballs was/is pretty much the only sizable conservative blog with a community-supporting infrastructure. Even LGF was only skirting that line — the site doesn’t allow user diaries, but has several other community features, giving it a 5 on the 8-point scale I developed for “Understanding Blogspace.” To the extent that community-supporting features are a necessary precursor to using blogs as a venue for coordinated political action, this represents another major step backward for the rightwing blogosphere.
I’ve written before about the decline of RedState, the supposed conservative equivalent of DailyKos, in the rankings. TheNextRight, which for awhile seemed like an up-and-coming conservative community blog, has fallen into disuse, going as much as a week between frontpage postings. Charles Johnson of LGF has been moving away from his fellow conservative bloggers for several months, so this announcement doesn’t come as an abrupt surprise. But it does emphasize a vacuum that exists in the supposed resurgence of grassroots conservatism. HotAir may be attracting more traffic and more comments than ever before, but then again so are DailyKos, HuffingtonPost, Talking Points Memo, and other progressive hubs. And unlike HotAir, a new visitor can immediately register and start participating on these leftwing sites. There is no conservative equivalent, and the potential kings of the conservative community blogging arena continue to disappear, defect, or fall into disarray.
Very interesting indeed…
2 Comments
December 14, 2009
Wow, I don’t know what to think. The more immature side of me wants to point and laugh, but the more thoughtful side of me is disappointed. Although I’d never consider myself conservative or a sympathizer, the fact that that efforts to mobilize political action has whimpered only takes away from any legitimacy the on-going debate conservatives and liberals have. The fight doesn’t seem so fair when one team is strong and healthy while the other has members suffering from the flu. No one really wins without competition.
December 14, 2009
Interesting perspective, Ann, thanks for commenting.
I have to say, my more-thoughtful side is more intrigued than disappointed. A couple things to keep in mind are that:
1) it’s repeatedly been found (Adamic and Glance 2005, Hindman 2008) that the blogosphere is very useful for facilitating discussion *within* communities-of-interest, but not so effective at facilitating discussion *across* them. So I’m not sure how much of an “on-going debate” is actually being stymied by the lack of vibrant online conservative gathering spaces.
2) conservatives have seen some real successes in using the internet to field an *offline* team — think tea parties and health care town halls. So in the arenas where the left and right do vocally interact, we see both sides fielding a team. I differ from some other analysts, most notably Patrick Ruffini, in my estimation of how impressive the town hall protests and similar events actually are (Ruffini thinks they indicate conservatives have achieved parity with the progressive netroots, I think that’s way overstated), but it is certainly an indication that they’re “fielding a team.”
3) we’re going to keep seeing more internet-mediated conservative action in the coming months/years, simply because we’re going to keep seeing more conservative action of all types in protest against the Obama agenda. So the big puzzle is why they seem to keep failing at a few basic infrastructure challenges. Community blogging software is helpful and not all that complicated. Why can’t RedState or a RedState clone gain a substantial following?
4) as a longtime fan of the beleaguered Washington Wizards basketball franchise, I have little pity for teams that suffer from the flu when going up against a strong, healthy opponent. Happens to one of my teams every year, seems only fair if it should happen to someone else’s now and then!
thanks for visiting,
-DK
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