Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Jun 5, 2008 - 4 comments

30 blogs a seguir en 2007 A selection of original and creative blogs in Spanish besides rankings and A-lists.
posted by jlori on Jan 4, 2007 - 15 comments

Senator John McCain (R. - AZ) has introduced legislation [PDF] that would hold blogs responsible for all activity in their comments sections and user profiles. Provisions of the proposed bill include: (1) commercial websites and personal blogs "would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000," (2) bloggers with comment sections may face "even stiffer penalties" than ISPs, and (3) any social-networking site must take "effective measures" to remove any Web page that's "associated" with a sex offender. "Because 'social-networking site' isn't defined, it could encompass far more than just MySpace.com, Friendster and similar sites." The list could include any site that allows comments, authot and personal profiles. Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that this proposal may be based more "on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts." "McCain’s legislation could deal a serious blow to the blogosphere. Lacking resources to police their sites, many individual blogs may have to shut down open discussion."^*
posted by ericb on Dec 14, 2006 - 141 comments

Remember when folks were "up-in-arms" after learning that the Bush administration paid prominent political commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote 'No Child Left Behind' legislation? It turns out that a handful of liberal bloggers pulled in some decent cash this past year from various political campaigns as consultants, while maintaining their "independent" blogs. Case in point: Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) made $115,000+ from Sherrod Brown (over 15 months) and $65,000 from Mark Warner (over 12 months). Turns out Armstrong admitted this week that he has been writing on his blog under various aliases -- including 'Scott Shields.' 'Shields' received payments from the Robert Menendez campaign.
posted by ericb on Dec 8, 2006 - 57 comments

"This is the kind of idea no politician could put forward now." In light of the recent Yearly KOS liberal blogger gathering, "old media" columnist David Broder surveys the potential emergence of a new generation of liberal blogs that strive to be taken seriously as promoters of actual domestic and foreign policy, including Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and The Democratic Strategist. Broder highlights a piece by Duke law professor (and anti-ironist wunderkind) Jedediah Purdy on "The New Biopolitics" (which suggests that first-world nations today should invest more into third-world economies, with the understanding that those third-world economies will later help pay the booming pensions and medical costs of first-world workers). Will liberal "ranty" blogs give way to more sober online journals of this sort? Or is it just more insider wonkery by another name? Was Woody Allen correct when he imagined what the merger of commentary and dissent would lead to, or can we look forward to a heightening of political discourse in the near future?
posted by bardic on Jun 22, 2006 - 13 comments

The (Broken) Triangle: Progressive Bloggers in the Wilderness. The Huffington Post's Peter Daou, whose dour forecast of how Bush and lazy media would spin away the NSA scandal proved prescient, on why "netroots activists" can't get traction: "It's slow-motion-car-wreck painful, and most certainly NOT where the left's triangle should be a half decade into the new millennium, as the Bush-propping machine hums and whirrs, poll numbers rise and fall, Iraq bleeds, scandal dissolves into scandal, terror speech blends into terror speech. The landscape is there for everyone to see, to analyze. Enough time has elapsed to make the system transparent. It is dismaying for netroots activists to see the same mistakes repeated..."
posted by digaman on Jan 13, 2006 - 19 comments

Remember Blogpoly? You can now play it online at Kurnik. Still no Metafilter though. (via Blogger Buzz)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 1, 2005 - 2 comments

What Blogs Are vs What They Are Not Doc Searls' closing keynote at Les Blogs, Paris, 25 April 2005 A succinct set of 25 slides that articulate the debate raging in the blogosphere about blogs, free speech, the media, citizen journalists . Slides link courtesy Gaping Void.
posted by infini on Apr 29, 2005 - 33 comments

Take a Nobel economist who has devoted his career to studying the effect of social and political change on microeconomic theory. Combine with the most prolific legal scholar of the past half-century and federal judge with immeasurable influence on American jurisprudence. Add Moveable Type and a bit of technical help from our fearless leader, and you've got the Becker-Posner Blog, which debuts today.
posted by PrinceValium on Dec 5, 2004 - 14 comments

Weblogging, the fad most poplular amongst teenage girls, is dying. The "blogosphere" will number ten million souls by the end of 2004, but almost all of them will be dead.
posted by the fire you left me on Oct 8, 2003 - 31 comments

At large in the blogosphere And yet another analysis of the world of blogging. Does this one, by a decent literary and cultural critic, present blogs and blogging in a better light than many earlier ones? note: NY Times free reg reqd.
posted by Postroad on May 5, 2002 - 43 comments

State of the Union Blog: quite possibly the first web site devoted to analyzing a speech before it happens. (warning: contains Republican content)
posted by darukaru on Jan 29, 2002 - 27 comments