The Politics of Blogging & Political Blogging

July 3, 2007 - 8:00 PM by Avi

Growing up outside of Washington, DC, I was imbibed with a passion for the political system and civil society organizations/NGOs since birth. Before coming to Israel, I worked on Capitol Hill and started my own non-profit while in high school, which, 10 years later, is still running. So, when I saw that the IDC’s blogference had two sessions about the role of politics and technology and also about how new diplomacy can be enhanced by new media, I jumped at the sessions.

The first, from Washingtonian contributing editor (I miss the Washingtonian!) Garrett Graff and Micah Sifry of Tech President and Personal Democracy Forum, was a fascinating synopsis of how technology is influencing American politics. Sifry started with an analysis of the Daily Kos blog, a left-leaning American blog, and explained how its 400,000+ visits per day are creating a community of activists. Familiar also with very right-leaning blogs like Little Green Footballs, I just wondered where the centrist blog is – maybe I can start it and create the next Daily Kos/LGF mix. Going over the structure of Kos, it was fascinating to see how important the layout and template is to a blog’s success. Graff mentioned how candidates are finally beginning to use new media in the 2008 presidential elections, with Barack Obama on Twitter (never heard of it before yesterday) and the social networking sites. He mentioned the familiar case of how YouTube and easy access to video essentially killed George Allen’s reelection (macaca anyone?) campaign. According to Graff, while Israeli technology is ahead, Israel is a year or two behind when it comes to blogs and especially political blogging (although, given that he’s an American and doesn’t read Hebrew and thus the Hebrew blogosphere, I question how he can make such a statement – even if he’s correct). Garrett’s statement was brought home at the other session.

talking about GIYUS The WJC-sponsored session on how new media can be used to shape diplomacy left me wishing I had attended Om Malik’s raved about session on practical issues in blogging. Beginning with Peleg Reshef (WJC’s Young Generations head in Israel) correctly pointing out that the non-profit world is in the middle ages, he called upon the (sparse) audience (apparently most people were at Malik’s session or hanging out with the Ask a Ninja guys) to help provide suggestions. I should have left then. Beginning with a short intro to GIYUS (full disclosure: ISRAEL21c is a sponsoring organization), which I was already familiar with (although the questions of some British IDC students about who determines the message was truly fascinating. Apparently this tool isn’t as Web 2.0 collaborative as some have thought), it quickly segued into Dr. Haim Fireburg of the Stephen Roth Institute for the study of Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University. He merely went over the website (they have PDF files. Wow! A searchable database? How revolutionary!), and so I left kicking myself for not going to the other sessions. More importantly, though, given the immense talent at the conference and the immense innovation, I kept on thinking all night about Reshef’s comments that the non-profit world is way behind in the fusion of technology and social activism. My guess, two answers: America has a greater tradition of civil society and social activism, which spreads to the success of American political blogs (Israel has a vast amount of small organizations, but they are really run by a handful of people, and the large non-profits in Israel and America are beholden to older donors who aren’t operating in a Web 2.0 world) and also that perhaps all the Israeli visionaries are working at startups and high techs, too busy creating. (Although, the younger Web 2.0 generation is threatening the status quo of stagnant social ventures with visionary conferences like ROI120 and the new Present Tense Institute for Creative Zionism.)