Professional Third Party Productions

Examples

  • Blogs discussing politics (not owned or maintained by candidates)

Secondary Sources or Scholarly Articles

Heller, Steven. "Ron Paul's Graphics Revolution." The New York Times. March 25, 2008
External source
Discussion of the artists building campaign material via the grassroots web.

Anonymous. "Presidential Campaigns Show Businesses How to Tap Social Networking and New Media Tactics: Deloitte." PR Newswire. New York: March 13, 2008.
External Source
This news article focuses on how new media is affecting the current political race. It compares politicians to brands and explains how now each candidate must market themselves through technologies such as blogs or even facebook in order to protect their own personal image. “Campaign managers are rapidly adopting and adapting to the latest communication techniques” and are now forced assessed threats both on and off-line. Average citizens are getting more involved via blogging and even have the ability to twist campaign messages in undesirable ways if they so choose to. Therefore, these new technologies come with additional risks to the politicians.

Schonfeld, Erick. "The ABC News-Facebook Presidential Debates." techcrunch.com. November 26, 2007
External Source
This article covers how ABC and Facebook teamed up to broadcast the New Hampshire presidential debates over the internet. Users were able to chat about topics during and after the debate and the hottest topics were included in the televised debate itself. Some statistics are also presented regarding how Facebook users are not representative of the country as a whole (58% are for Obama, whereas polls at that time said 26% actually; 34% for Ron Paul, polls said 3% actually)

Broder, John. "Edwards Learns Blogs Can Cut 2 Ways." The New York Times. February 9, 2007.
External Source
Covers the role that bloggers are playing in political campaigns on the actual staff of a candidate. Edwards hired two controversial feminist bloggers and chose not get release them in part because of the repercussions he would face from the blogger community

The Pew Research Center. "Summary of Findings: Internet's Broader Role in Campaign 2008." The Pew Research Center: for the People and the Press. March 23, 2008.
External Source
The study has found that over the years, an increasing number of Americans rely on the Internet to learn more information about presidential political campaigns. Television's role as being a source of campaign information has remained important, but it is decreasing in popularity, especially among younger people. Social networking sites and online video have played an increasing role in educating people about political campaigns.

Drezner, D. & Farrell, H. "The Power and Politics of Blogs." Springer Science and Business Media. August 2004.
External source
Weblogs occupy an increasingly important place in American politics. Their influence presents a puzzle: given the disparity in resources and organization vis-à-vis other actors, how can a collection of decentralized, nonprofit, contrarian, and discordant websites exercise any influence over political and policy outputs? This paper answers that question by focusing on two important aspects of the “blogosphere”: the distribution of readers across the array of blogs, and the interactions between significant blogs and traditional media outlets. Under specific circumstances – when key weblogs focus on a new or neglected issue – blogs can socially construct an agenda or interpretive frame that acts as a focal point for mainstream media, shaping and constraining the larger political debate. These arguments receive support from a network analysis of blog links, as well as a survey of media professionals about their blog preferences.

Singe, Jane "‘Normalizing’ a new media form to fit old norms and practices." The Political J-Blogger. 2005
External Source
This study explores how the increasingly popular blog format, as adopted by journalists affiliated with mainstream media outlets, affects long-standing journalistic norms and practice. It focuses on non-partisanship, transparency and the gatekeeping role, using a content analysis of 20 weblogs dealing with politics or civic affairs. Although expressions of opinion are common, most journalists are seeking to remain gatekeepers even in this highly interactive and participatory format. Political j-bloggers use links extensively - but mostly to other mainstream media sites. At least in their early use, journalists are ‘normalizing’ the blog as a component, and in some ways an enhancement, of traditional journalistic norms and practices.

Adamic, L. & Glance, N. "The political blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. election: divided they blog." Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data. 2005
External Source
In this paper, we study the linking patterns and discussion topics of political bloggers. Our aim is to measure the degree of interaction between liberal and conservative blogs, and to uncover any differences in the structure of the two communities. Specifically, we analyze the posts of 40 "A-list" blogs over the period of two months preceding the U.S. Presidential Election of 2004, to study how often they referred to one another and to quantify the overlap in the topics they discussed, both within the liberal and conservative communities, and also across communities. We also study a single day snapshot of over 1,000 political blogs. This snapshot captures blogrolls (the list of links to other blogs frequently found in sidebars), and presents a more static picture of a broader blogosphere. Most significantly, we find differences in the behavior of liberal and conservative blogs, with conservative blogs linking to each other more frequently and in a denser pattern.

Cross, Remy. "Blogging for Votes: An Examination of the Interaction Between Weblogs and the Electoral Process." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Marriott Hotel, Loews Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, PA. August 12, 2005
External Source
"Weblogs," or "blogs," constitute an emerging online media form whose prominence has grown in recent years. The 2004 US presidential election saw a new focus placed upon blogs as a political tool, which some believed to have the potential to revolutionize political reporting and discourse within the United States. Blogs were involved in political mobilization (including fund-raising activities) during the election cycle, and some blog authors were granted credentialed status at the DNC and RNC political conventions.
This paper explores how best to classify weblogs within the realm of political media. We examine several blogs networks by multiple time series models relating the evolution of structural properties such as density, centralization, and cohesion to changes in national and state level polling data during the last three and a half months leading up to the election. Our analysis tests the hypotheses that weblogs can be seen as either nascent political organizations or as political communication networks. Additionally it emphasizes the importance of studying large-scale networks as open systems, and demonstrates some useful techniques for future studies of network dynamics.

Hindmany, M., Tsioutsiouliklisz, K., Johnson, J. "'Googlearchy': How a few heavily-linked sites dominate politics on the web." Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. 2004
External Source
Many political scientists have assumed that the World Wide Web would lower the cost of political information and reduce inequalities of attention for those outside the political mainstream. However, computer scientists have consistently reported that the aggregate structure of the Web is antiegalitarian; it seems to follow a \winners take all" power-law distribution, where a few successful sites receive the bulk of online trac. In an attempt to reconcile these apparently disparate conclusions, this study undertakes a large-scale survey of the political content available online. The study involves iterative crawling away from political sites easily accessible through popular online search tools, and it uses sophisticated automated methods to categorize site content. We nd that, in every category we examine, a tiny handful of Websites dominate. While this may lower the cost of nding at least some high-quality information on a given political topic, it greatly limits the impact of the vast majority of political Websites.

Kline, D. & Burstein, D. "Blog!: how the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture." 2005
Google books page
examine the notion that weblogs, or "blogs," are redefining journalism and media consumption and conclude that, while blogging may not signal the death of big media, it has measurably impacted everything from political campaigns-as evidenced by Howard Dean's presidential bid-to the life of former child star Wil Wheaton, who found his "second act" in a tell-all blog about the humiliations of show business. Soliciting the thoughts of well-known bloggers, such as Andrew Sullivan and Jeff Jarvis, the authors create a venerable blogosphere bible that navigates and interprets the cyber-verbosity informing the way journalists do their jobs, from fact finding to steering coverage. Using specific examples of blogger power, such as the release of an Iranian dissident from prison, and employing Q&A interviews with movers and shakers like Microsoft's Robert Scoble to discuss blogs' current and future marketplace utility, the authors offer a lot to consider about our information-saturated culture and what cream might rise to the top of it.

Trammell, K. "Blog offensive: An exploratory analysis of attacks published on campaign blog posts from a political public relations perspective." Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. 2006
External Source
An advancement in online campaigning during the 2004 election cycle was the integration of blogs in candidate Web sites. This content analysis investigated the political public relations message strategy on campaign blogs during the 2004 election, focusing on attacks as a part of Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse. Results indicated frequent discussion of the opponent, reliance on attacks, and the dominance of logical appeals. Candidates focused on issue over image. The incumbent attacked more often than the challenger.

Karbel, M. & Bloom, J. "Blog for America and Civic Involvement." The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. 2005
External Source
Web logs (blogs) were an integral component of the 2004 presidential campaign and are a new medium for civic engagement. Arguably, the most important campaign blog was Blog for America, which served as a nerve center for Governor Howard Dean's insurgent presidential campaign. The authors offer an initial assessment of the community that developed around Blog for America and its orientation toward civic engagement, based on an original content analysis of 3,066 unique posts encompassing every entry in the Dean blog from March 15, 2003, through January 27, 2004. The guiding hypothesis is that blog discussion centered on a set of system-affirming topics absent from or unusual in political coverage on television,particularly substantive policy debate and community action.The authors find Blog for America to be an example of how the Internet is emerging as a vehicle for enhanced civic involvement with the potential to counteract the negative effects of television on the political process.

Wallsten, K. "Political Blogs and the Bloggers Who Blog Them: Is the Political Blogosphere and Echo Chamber?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Setember 1, 2005.
External source
Most studies of political blogging have focused exclusively on the so-called “A-list” political blogs. While these studies have provided important insights into the content of A-list political blogs (Adamic and Glance, 2005), how A-list political blogs influence media coverage (Drezner and Farrell, 2004) and who A-list political bloggers are (McKenna and Pole, 2004), they have largely ignored the thousands of less read political blogs that are written by average citizens every day. As a result, relatively little is known about political blogging “by the rest of us” (Schiano et al., 2004). Perhaps most surprising in this regard is the fact that while there has been much debate over whether political blogging is a form of political participation (McKenna and Pole, 2004), there has been no systematic research into how ordinary people are using blogs as a form of political expression. In this paper, I will address this oversight by using a computer assisted, quantitative content analysis of 25 randomly selected, non-A-list political blogs over the six month period from July to November 2004 in order to determine the relationship between mainstream media coverage and political blog discussion. The results of this study will help shed light on whether the political blogosphere is a merely an “echo chamber” for the messages of political elites as reported in the mainstream media.

Johnson, T. & Kaye B. "Wag the Blog: How Reliance on Traditional Media and the Internet Influence Credibilty Perceptions to Weblogs among Blog Users." J&MC Quarterly. 2004
External Source
This study surveyed Weblog users online to investigate how credible they viezi' blogs as compared to traditional media as weil as other online sources. This study also explores the degree to which reliance on Weblogs as well as traditional and online media sources predicts credibility of Weblogs after controlling for demographic aud political factors. Weblog users judged blogs as highly credible—more credible thau traditional sources. They did, however, rate traditional sources as moderately credible. Weblog users rated blogs higher on depth of information than they did 0)i fairness.

Wikipedia. "Political Blog: United States." Wikipedia. 2008
External Source
Talks about influence on US politics, and notable American political blogs and bloggers

Sroka. "Understanding the Political Influence of Blogs: A Study of the Growing Importance of the Blogosphere in the U.S. Congress." The Graduate School of Political Management The George Washington University. April 2006.
External source
While a very new field of research, most of the academic studies of blogging and politics conducted thus far have looked at the budding relationship through a media-based lens. In these studies, blogs are seen to affect politics only insofar as they are able to refocus the media's attention and re-frame policy debates. While this way of seeing the emergent association between blogs and politics makes a great deal of sense, the blogosphere also seems to be playing an increasingly powerful role in framing ideas and issues for legislators and leaders directly. Using a survey of congressional offices conducted between January and March 2006, I attempt to gain a picture of the readership, usage, and opinion of blogs and blogging on Capital Hill, in order to make the case for blogging’s direct effect on the modern legislative process. I conclude that, although more study is needed to know how blog readership and usage directly impact policy decisions, the high levels of blog readership and the widely held view that blogs function as the "watchdog" of the mainstream media clearly suggest that the blogosphere has a much stronger voice being heard by legislators than previously considered.

Primary Sources

detnews.com politics blog
The Detnews.com Politics blog is a blend of Detroit News staffers and selected voices from the public. Spartans Blog the Campaign: Michigan State students blog the campaign for The Detroit News with posts and videos featuring their unique perspectives as first-time voters.

Etalkinghead's Political Blog
has listings for over 500 political blogs in categories like news, religious, liberal, conservative, independent, libertarian, moderate, humor.

The Fix: washingtonpost.com's Politics blog
Chris Cillizza daily posts on a range of political topics, from the latest 2008 wannabe to take a trip to Iowa to who's up and who's down in the race for control of Congress in 2006

The Daily Kos: State of the Nation
A liberal political blog with a large and dedicated following

The Caucus Blog
The New York Times's politics staff on the latest news from the campaign trail and around Washington.

Real Clear Politics Blog
General blog maintained by Time and CNN

BlogFlux Politics Blogs
Has directory of political blogs

Jason Rosenbaum Politics Blog
Jason Rosenbaum political blog hosted by the Columbia Daily Tribune

SFGate Politics Blog
The Chronicle's Politics Blog offers on-line readers breaking news, analysis and discussions about what's current in politics. Compiled by Chronicle political writers and editors, the blog features original content and links to Chronicle articles and voter resources…

Political Intelligence - Boston.com
Field reports from Boston Globe reporters and editors covering the 2008 presidential campaign and the national maneuvering of Bay State politicians.

Latest Politics Blog
The New York Sun's political blog

BlogCatalog - Political Blogs
BlogCatalog features 4,292 Political blogs for you to browse

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