(The following is a response to a comment to a post on Connecticut Local Politics. I think it stands pretty well as a blog post in and of itself.)

While I disagree considerably with turfgrrl’s assessment that ‘blogs, and the internet in general have very little effect on political campaigns, and especially here in CT’, I want to applaud her on her post. It is well thought out and the sort of stuff I wish we saw more of here.

With that, let me make various comments. First and foremost, I don’t view blogs and the internet is substantially different for other modes of communication. Turfgrrl is right to note that while the MSM is picking up more stories online, they’ve always picked up stories from “inside” contacts. Perhaps this gets to a little bit of how the Internet and blogs are helping turn politics inside out.

Anyone can set up a blog. Anyone can do research online. Anyone can build an effective online social network. Anyone can more easily become an influential insider. This is enabling new people to get into the political process in a manner which I believe is generally improving the political process.

This ties into idea of how it is now easier to find groups of people that are passionate about the same issues. This is empowering and I believe is beneficial to people working on issues.

Of course this does raise the ‘echo chamber’ effect, and many blogs simply become echo chambers. Having an echo chamber is beneficial to the extent that it strengthens people to reach outside of their echo chambers. Robert Putnam has a good discussion about this in his book, Bowling Alone. In the book, he talks about social capital, and specifically two different types of social capital, bridging social capital and bonding social capital. The echo chamber effect is a good example of the bonding social capital. People bond with one another online, and from that often end up meeting face to face. They are strengthened in their resolve on many issues.

Bridging social capital is when people from a group reach out to another group. I often talk about the importance of bridging social capital, especially in political blogging. It is part of the reason my primary blog is not specifically a political blog. We need to talk about our politics in the context of our complete lives, and in doing so, we can bridge to other people.

From this, we get to the question of how much of an effect do blogs really have on people outside of the blogosphere. It has been suggested that many people don’t read blogs. First, I would suggest that is not exactly accurate. I don’t have the studies available, but I recall some studies about people who claim not to read blogs, but when you track their internet use, you find they do searches on Google, which takes them to blogs. They are reading blogs without knowing it.

Likewise, as stories start, or are kept alive in blogs and cross over to the MSM, people are getting stories from the Internet without realizing it. However, the other part is what takes place when online people get offline. Today, I went to a birthday party for a friend of my daughter. At the party I spoke with various people who are not online at all. I talked about things I’d been reading in the blogs. They will be talking with their offline friends about this as well.

With that, I would encourage people to look at the Roper report on Influentials Online. They talk about Influentials being the 10% of the population that shape the attitude and behaviors of the other 90%. They talk about how Influentials are now getting most of their information online.

To go back to my initial comments, the Internet isn’t a substantially different mode of communication. Back in the 50’s, Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld wrote a seminal work entitled “Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications”. It looked at the way people spread information from mass communications during the 1944 Preidential election. It fits nicely with the Roper report, and it is worth noting that Elmo Roper wrote the introduction to Katz’s book.

So, my view? The Internet and blogs are the new tools of favor among influentials. They are having a big effect. The modes of communication are changing, although not substantially. Influential people are taking advantage of this change, and this is good for democracy.