When your research subjects notice you watching.... The fine folks over at Little Green Footballs discovered "a pile of results and code" from an observation of their on-line discourse on a server at Carnegie Mellon. That led to a heated thread of sometimes paranoid speculation that eventually calmed down (somewhat) when the researcher's academic advisors posted a good-natured mea-culpa (wea-culpa?) and explanation.
posted on May 18, 2008 - View this thread

A Lone Tibetan Voice, Intent on Speaking Out. Woeser (previously mentioned here) is a Tibetan writer and poet living under house arrest in Beijing, from where she blogs about the recent unrest in Tibet (there are English translations of her posts at China Digital Times). Last year she was awarded the Norwegian Authors Union Freedom of Expression Prize, but she was not allowed to travel to Oslo to collect the prize.
posted on May 6, 2008 - View this thread

As Iraqis See It. "About a year ago, McClatchy Newspapers set up a blog exclusively for contributions from its Iraqi staff. 'Inside Iraq,' it's called, and several times a week the Iraqi staff members post on it about their experiences and impressions. 'It's an opportunity for Iraqis to talk directly to an American audience,' says Leila Fadel, the current bureau chief. As such, the blog fills a major gap in the coverage." Previously discussed here. [Via disinformation.]
posted on Jan 15, 2008 - View this thread

The Wire is dissent; it argues that our systems are no longer viable for the greater good of the most, that America is no longer operating as a utilitarian and democratic experiment. An already-quite-good discussion about The Wire, originating in Mark Bowden's Atlantic article ('The Angriest Man in Television') and continuing through Mark Bowden's post on the show's nihilistic bleakness gets even more interesting on Matt Yglesias's blog, where the creator of the show stops by to give his opinion on what it's all supposed to mean.
posted on Jan 3, 2008 - View this thread

And we're off! Prime Minister John Howard has set the date for the Australian Federal election as November 24th, meaning we're up for a long six-week campaign. With Kevin Rudd leading the PM by between 16 to 18 points (depending on who you read) in recent opinion polls, this election seems the most likely to provide a change of Government since Howard was first elected 11 years ago. Antony Green's usual excellent election guide is up and running here, along with an excellent calculator which shows which seats are up for grabs dependent on a 2 party preferred swing. You might also want to check out the Vote-O-Matic, a fun but entirely disposable quiz which aims to help you decide who you'll vote for.
posted on Oct 13, 2007 - View this thread

Cabinet: The Movie. Starring Australian PM John Howard and a bunch of chickens. [more inside]
posted on Jul 18, 2007 - View this thread

Mo Rocca: Mo Rocca, former Daily Show correspondent and wandering funnyman, has begun blogging and vlogging for AOL News.
posted on Feb 22, 2007 - View this thread

Time magazine recently launched a new politics blog, Swampland. The blog is, to this point, most interesting for its confrontations between the commenters and the bloggers. [m.i.]
posted on Jan 26, 2007 - View this thread

Is the web fuelling a crisis in politics? Matthew Taylor, Blair's chief strategy advisor has commented "as a citizen" that the "net-head" culture of political criticism is fuelling a crisis in politics where the populace is "increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet capable of self-government." One of his chief targets is the blogosphere, because he says bloggers are like teenagers - demanding, but "conflicted" about what they actually want.
posted on Nov 17, 2006 - View this thread

Nice work if you can get it. Bloggers are an increasingly important part of modern elections -- something that becomes immediately obvious when you look at FEC filings. Bloggers are increasingly starting to rake in the campaign cash. Initially inspired by this feature from The Hotline, Bill Beutler combed through the FEC records and broke down what candidates were paying what bloggers how much in the current election.
posted on Nov 7, 2006 - View this thread

Calling All Wingnuts blogger Mike Stark (previously discussed here) found himself in a fight with George Allen's staffers after asking the Senator an impertinent question about his first wife and sealed divorce file and court records.
posted on Oct 31, 2006 - View this thread

Pat Buchanan blogs. Let the name-calling begin.
posted on Sep 4, 2006 - View this thread

Esposing Earmarks: networked journalism's first assignment. Today marks a key moment in the evolution of the Web as a reporting medium. The first left-right-center coalition of bloggers, activists, non-profits, citizens and journalists to investigate a story of national import: Congressional earmarks and those who sponsor and benefit from them. Join the hunt!
posted on Aug 18, 2006 - View this thread

"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 on Jun 22, 2006 - View this thread

Battle of the blogger book clubs! Glenn Reynolds Drudge vs. Glenn Greenwald Kos (I think.) The winner gets* a copy of the current #1 book on Amazon.
posted on Apr 27, 2006 - View this thread

Passport is the name of a recently-launched blog written by the editors of Foreign Policy magazine, covering the same wide range of topics as the magazine itself does. Updated frequently and around the clock, informal and personal — I don't know if it's just because it's new, but they're doing a great job, and if you're a world politics and news junkie like me, it's fantastic.
posted on Apr 12, 2006 - View this thread

Conservative Blogs Rock! NEW YORK In an argument sure to be challenged in certain sectors of the blogosphere, a story in The New York Times magazine coming up this Sunday declares that conservative blogs continue to best liberal blogs in political and electoral influence.
posted on Dec 9, 2005 - View this thread

"House to Vote on Political Blogging Rules" How is this to be interpreted? What's yhe motivation behind this? Who would it help more, MoveOn , or Blogs for Bush, or whom else?
posted on Nov 2, 2005 - View this thread

UK politician chooses his blog over his party: Paul Leake, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Durham, was asked by his local party to remove any "controversial" posts from his weblog and to give them the right to vet future posts. Denis Jackson, another Liberal Democrat on Durham City Council, said that the Labour councillors were using the blog to find "lurid headlines". Leake refused, and stepped down from the party. He'll now serve his constituents as an independent. [Via The Political Weblog Project]
posted on Sep 19, 2005 - View this thread

Plogress.com is a new project to provide current information on what Senators and Representatives are currently doing in Congress. It consists of a separate blog--with feeds--for each US Senator and Representative, listing bills that he or she is sponsor of or cosponsor. Plans are in the works to add votes and committee activities.
posted on May 18, 2005 - View this thread

Black Market Press: Back Again The Popular Tri-State Area Zine Team, Black Market Press is back again, older, wiser, and broadcasting to a much wider readership thanks to the popularity of the Blog. Social and political commentary from the pamphleteering team that brought you Media Blitz back in 1995. We encourage you to send us links, news, or hate mail.
posted on Apr 18, 2005 - View this thread

The Coming Crackdown on Political Blogging. "In just a few months... bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list...could be punished by fines." CNet's engrossing interview with an FEC commissioner who predicts major turmoil ahead as the government tries to decide if a blog link is a donation. A Brookings paper (pdf) suggest "Radical changes in modes of communication and forms of political campaigning lie not too distant on the horizon." This guy says it's all an attempt to undermine campaign finance laws by freaking out bloggers.
posted on Mar 3, 2005 - View this thread

Blogs contribute to political reform in Iran (New York Times): Former vice-president of Iran, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, said that he learned through the Internet about the huge gap between government officials and the younger generation. "We do not understand each other and cannot have a dialogue," he said. "As government officials, we receive a lot of confidential reports about what goes on in society. But I have felt that I learned a lot more about people and the younger generation by reading their Web logs and receiving about 40 to 50 e-mails every day. This is so different than reading about society in those bulletins from behind our desks."
posted on Jan 16, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Dec 5, 2004 - View this thread

Professor Allan Lichtman has predicted the results of the past four elections correctly using a system known as The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency.

The Keys predict election results by assessing the performance and strength of the party holding the White House. The thirteen points take into account all the factors that decide elections from the obvious (how the economy is doing) to the more subtle (whether the party in power has achieved major policy change). If eight or more of the keys favour the candidate of the incumbent party, he wins. Any fewer, he loses.

Eighteen months ago Lichtman forecast that Bush would retain the presidency. But the Republican Party now has seven keys turned against it for 2004, one more than the fatal six negative keys.
posted on Nov 1, 2004 - View this thread

The Bloggers on the Bus: The New York Times Magazine on bloggers on the campaign trail, and what effect they may or may not have.
posted on Sep 26, 2004 - View this thread

The Power of a Blog: take one conservative Republican Representative from Virginia (a co-sponsor of the Federal Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment and representing a district that includes Pat Robertson's homebase), mix with gay sex phone lines, and you have it: his resignation, over "allegations."
posted on Aug 30, 2004 - View this thread

The true identity of the "mysterious" Atrios has been revealed.
posted on Jul 28, 2004 - View this thread

While much of the blogging world has been ga-ga over getting into the Democratic National Convention, it's tough to find anything interesting going on among the convention bloggers (to their credit, go turn on CSPAN today and see for yourself how boring it is). While our own Jessamyn is there (here are profiles of everyone going), I've found the strange CNN/Technorati partnership to be the most useful thing. Technorati founder David Sifry is basically doing a metafilter of all convention blogs over on CNN as the daily blog roundup, highlighting the posts worth reading among the participants.
posted on Jul 27, 2004 - View this thread

ConventionBloggers.com
An aggregation of bloggers is attending the DNC, and here is a combined feed, courtesy of Dave Winer. If this isn't enough to send you into spasms of delirious ecstasy, you might also wish to explore politics.feedster.com and politics.technorati.com.
posted on Jul 25, 2004 - View this thread

The intern accused of having an affair with Kerry does some investigative reporting of her own.

And so my education had taken me pretty much as far as it could. I started out as an ambitious young woman inspired by politics and the media. I’ve ended up disenchanted with both. If I had been an ambitious young man, this story would not have happened. I’m never going to know exactly what happened, but that matters less to me now. I lost a good friend and learned a few lessons. I am struck by the pitiful state of political reporting, which is dominated by the unholy alliance of opposition research and its latest tool, the Internet. Even the Wall Street Journal’s Website ran Drudge’s story, with only a brief disclaimer that his stories weren’t always accurate.

It was important for me to set the record straight. I don’t mean to dredge up old news by writing this, and I’m not trying to create any now, though I’m not unaware of the irony that I am adding to the ink spilled on this story. I don’t intend to discuss it again in public either. But for me, this painful experience will be hard to forget. It may be only a minor footnote to the campaign, but it has changed my life completely.
posted on Jun 2, 2004 - View this thread

I am Blogger, hear me roar! (3.1mb PDF) - A new study shows that "Online Political Citizens are not isolated cyber-geeks, as the media has portrayed them. On the contrary, OPCs are nearly seven times more likely than average citizens to serve as opinion leaders among their friends, relatives and colleagues. OPCs are disproportionately “Influentials,” the Americans who “tell their neighbors what to buy, which politicians to support, and where to vacation...” " They are “canaries in the mineshaft for looming political ideas” and tend to be more young, white, single, college educated, and affluent than average. I just feel so influential. Now where's the friggin paycheck...
posted on Feb 6, 2004 - View this thread

It's an interesting week in British politics (and not just because of Hutton). On Tuesday evening, British MP (and noted blogger) Tom Watson raised the subject of RFID tags in a House of Commons debate (text here) - as a result of being alerted to the threat to civil liberties by fellow bloggers. Indeed, he even talked about his website in the chamber. Can blogs continue to affect British democracy? Quite possibly...
posted on Jan 28, 2004 - View this thread

Dem Blogs This community is filled with bloggers and I wondered if anyone had seen Maureen O'Dowd's take on how the Presidential Candidates are starting to use, for better or worse, "blogging" as a method to get their "message" across. ( Registration required )
posted on Aug 13, 2003 - View this thread

ABC's blog "The Note" suspends operations, citing lack of resources needed for war coverage, the blog's humorous style not being "the right national tonic," and this shocker: "We suspect that the amount of strictly political news — the kind of stuff that is the meat and starch of The Note — is likely to dramatically decrease in the coming days." GUH? Aren't blogs now more important than ever? Aren't politics now more important than ever? What message is being sent by the mainstream media here? (Via the indispensable Lloyd Grove of the Washington Post.)
posted on Mar 11, 2003 - View this thread

Howard Dean is anti-war, pro-health care, and one of his biggest support sites is a blogspot-hosted web log. We know that bloggers helped dethrone Trent Lott. Can we elect a president? Discussed before but still important.
posted on Mar 11, 2003 - View this thread

"They're already calling her the Weblog Candidate." Tara Grubb is running for Congress against P2P bill cosponsor Howard Coble. She has a weblog, and she's getting a lot of support from the weblog world.
posted on Aug 24, 2002 - View this thread

Anti-Idiotarian Coalition/United Blogging Nation? It seems all this talk of UN bias has has some bloggers so frustrated and angry that they feel it's time to band together as a political force, and the beginnings of a movement are taking shape. Legal actions, media attention, and even a full fledged political party are all ideas that have been bandied about. They already have a couple of legal eagles and prominent blogging figures offering services/resources. All they need now are t-shirts. Oh wait, they have those too. One Nation, under Blog...
posted on May 2, 2002 - View this thread