Welcome Matt, thanks for joining us

Matthew, Welcome to the Lake.

Dave, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Thanks, Dave — It’s great to be here.

Matt, to start things off, can you tell us a bit about why you chose to study the Netroots? What attracted you to this topic/this community?

Whats the number of viewers in relation to comments at the bigger blogs like the Lake?
How long on average do blogs have to cover a story before the MSM picks it up assuming they do pick it up?

In chapters that compare the netroots to previous technologically-mediated social movements in American history, compare the progressive netroots to the conservative “rightroots,

In over view describe the Right Roots.

For over a decade, I had been writing about the role of television in politics — particularly the way television distances people from the political process. It’s not a coincidence that cynicism has increased along with the prominence of television in politics. Then I discovered the Dean campaign and Blog for America, and the difference was dramatic. There was a strong sense of community and ownership of the campaign by people who might otherwise have been shut out, but who were engaged in part because of this new medium, the Internet. My interest in the Netroots follows from there.

Some blogging (but not all) has a real impact on elite decision-makers and public narratives.

Examples?

“The Left is better situated than the right to take advantage of open source Internet politics”

Why

Good afternoon Matt and Dave and welcome to FDL.

Matt, I have not had an opportunity to read your book but this from Dave’s intro is a truth:

One particularly refreshing element of Kerbel’s work is his decision to focus on the netroots as a social movement rather than focusing on blogging more generally.

For myself, I know I resemble that remark. It took a bit of searching before I found FDL as a site where discussions could be had without degenerating into the standard “Your Mama” “No YOUR Mama” type noise.

Why do you think so many folks still buy into the stereotypes? Laziness or threatened?

•“The Left is better situated than the right to take advantage of open source Internet politics

Why?

Mr. Kerbel, let me start off by saying that I have not read your book, but might do so since I am interested in the effects of the internet as media.

I wonder if you could tell me: how did Daily Kos get so big? In 2007, and my information is a bit out of date here, they were three times larger than even the nearest competitor. (In terms of visits.)

What gave them such an advantage?

I enjoyed reading your discussion of that “Dean moment” so-to-speak in the book. Following up on that, if you thinking back to Blog for America in 2003 versus the big hub blogs of today, what changes or developments have surprised or impressed you the most?

Also, the netroots are now starting to splinter: some want to support Ds, or Obama, no matter what. Others say it’s the policy that counts and we much find candidates who will support the policies. Since netroots has so little polical power to begin with, won’t such a split make its political influence deminimus?

The big difference between the progressive Netroots and the right blogosphere is largely a matter of organization, where the progressive blogosphere is horizontally organized and the conservative blogosphere is more vertically integrated with other conservative media. This makes the right blogosphere an effective mouthpiece for top-down messaging, but it doesn’t permit the right to take advantage of the open source architecture of the Internet, which is where you can find the transformational potential of online politics. The left also features community blogs, which are ideal for social networking and political action.

In what sense are the netroots an “elite” movement? Do you think that people who read here, for example, aren’t participating in local and state politics as members of the Democratic party?

Thanks. I asked the same Q and expected that would be the A.

“The netroots are an elite movement”

What I thought we were all Cheeto eating Pajama wearing types? The Trolls and Media only call us Elite when we use Facts against their lies.
Public School, Community College, Public College in the house! Wait is Elite meant to mean we were right and Bush and the Main Stream Media were wrong about everything the last 8 years, the Wars WMD, letting Ossama go while Iraq was invaded, Mission Accomplished, the economy, tax cuts during a war, lowering interest rates and the housing bubble, Katrina, Terry Schiao, Blackwater, KBR etc
If so then fine:)

Great Minds eCHAN:)

You know, you can’t even compare the Internet circa 2003 with what we have today. I don’t know if you would call this a surprise, but one of the things I’m seeing is a maturation of the blogosphere much like we would see with any organization over time. You can see this in the political influence of the blogosphere, and in the way it is taken seriously by mainstream political actors and journalists who once dismissed it.

My guess is that the right tends to be very top-down; even silly garbage e-mail smear forwards often are crafted by conservative propaganda professionals.

On the other hand, the left can’t be top-down even if it wanted to be — the same thing that makes it hard to organize lefties for long-term political action also makes various lefty groups much more flexible and responsive to societal and technological change. The righties had their blogs first, but the lefties soon outstripped them — by 2005, more people read lefty blogs than righty ones. About the one thing they have that we don’t (well, besides a cowed legacy media willing to echo their themes) is a perfection of the use of e-mail as a rumor tool.

Examples of ideas from below filtering up that really changed things?

I can’t wait to read this book. Thanks for chatting today, Mr Kerbel, and thanks for the terrific intro, Mr Karpf.

My question is about this statement:

“There is evidence that the netroots are making progress toward their political objectives”

What, in your view, is the strongest evidence for this? And what new evidence has emerged since your book was published?

Thanks so much.

The big difference between the progressive Netroots and the right blogosphere is largely a matter of organization, where the progressive blogosphere is horizontally organized and the conservative blogosphere is more vertically integrated with other conservative media. This makes the right blogosphere an effective mouthpiece for top-down messaging, but it doesn’t permit the right to take advantage of the open source architecture of the Internet, which is where you can find the transformational potential of online politics. The left also features community blogs, which are ideal for social networking and political action.

A-yep. There are a lot of people who went from the Dean campaign to running for office — and winning.

Yeah some of us are Brown and ex Felons :)

I’ll have you know I prefer potato chips, or cashews. Ooops, guess that makes me “elite.”

Roughly speaking, FDL gets about 80,000 hits/day and 2,000 comments. That 40/1 ratio is high compared to other elite blogs, actually. One of the ways that we can measure the comparative weakness of the “rightroots” is that many of their comment threads turn out to be ghost towns, relatively speaking.

As for blog coverage moving into the MSM, that’s trickier. Usually blogs and MSM are reacting to the same activity simultaneously (when there’s a big speech or event, both are reacting to it), but in very different ways.

Five or six years ago I started telling people that if they wanted to go forward in time they should read the left-leaning blogs. They would hear about things weeks or months before the MSM picked up on it. In the case of Valerie Plame it was more like a year.

Yep.

In America, doesn’t “elite” mean owns a computer and has free time to use it?

How are hits/day counted? Every time someone logs on? Even though that person was on earlier? Or is it every unique person? If the former, the counting system can be easily gamed.

There are a couple of comments about the Netroots as an elite, and I do use that construction in my book. Think about the different ways television and the Internet operate as political media, and I think you’ll be able to see what I mean. Television is a centralizing medium — a mass medium in the traditional sense that it unifies countless numbers of people around the same message. The proliferation of cable channels notwithstanding, television reaches large numbers of people with relatively few options. The Internet is the reverse, in that if you asked N number of people to tell you their most frequently visited websites, you’d get N responses. We know that most people don’t use the Internet for political activism. Still, that small subset which does can get wield a lot of influence (and you don’t have to look any further than FireDogLake for examples). That’s what I mean when I use the term elite. And, yes, ThingsComeUndone, you can do all this and still eat Cheetos if you like!

It took a bit of searching before I found FDL as a site where discussions could be had without degenerating into the standard “Your Mama” “No YOUR Mama” type noise.

Seconded! here we are like family and the comments build on what we each say to one an other as well as the post itself plus I think we use more links than other blogs in the comments.
We are kind of unique why?

Sounds about right to me!

My def of “elite” is anyone who can ask an interesting Q.

haha, one thing I should clarify (and that Matt makes clear in the book) is that we aren’t using “elite” here in the pejorative sense that its often used in the mainstream media.

So for instance, Massachio and Phoenix Woman have both just pointed out that the netroots are involved in local politics, often running for office. That makes this community different than the passive consumption activity that defined the television era of politics. “elites,” are the small segment of society that actually choose to participate in politics. (Volvo drivers and latte-sippers, if they’re just sitting on the sidelines, thus wouldn’t be considered “elite.”)

I think that’s right, and I’d add that the right also had a political infrastructure that was unmatched on the left, so what emerged on the left happened out of necessity as much as design.

aaaand there Matt answered the question better than I did while I was typing…

Thanks for clearing that up, Dave. That’s an important distinction. I don’t see the term “elite” as pejorative at all.

potato chips, or cashews.

Make you Elite:) I think being wrong as often as Ben Stein, Bobo Brooks, George Will or George Bush and still keeping your job shows you have Elite pull.
Wait are you saying Bush likes Potato chips? I thought he was a Pretzel fan?

Hi Dave, Hi Matt. Thanks both of you for being here.

Curious if either of you have had a chance to look at political activism on social networking platforms like Facebook or Change.or, and if you have any observations about what’s going on there.

Unemployed and using the library internet could also work.

Well, if cashews don’t make me elite, let me inform you that my pre-dinner cocktail tonight is Pernod. Plz don’t shoot me down. I’m trying so hard to be elite.

Thanks your facts seem right.

hits/day are counted by SiteMeter (see the logo at the bottom of this page). That software can be kinda wonky, but the idea is that if someone visits, surfs away, and visits again immediately, they’re only counted once. If they visit at 8AM and 8PM, they’re counted twice because they’ve been away long enough to clear off the logs.

There are other ways of counting as well, and (very boring) debates about which is best. My opinion is that they’re all far-from-ideal… it’s just tremendously hard to access these basic things through public data online, unfortunately. That said, they at least provide us some rough numbers to work from, and that’s better than nothing.

Saint Pauli Girl beer for me my tummy can’t handle pisswater and rotgut like it used to.

I wonder what the lefty blogosphere would look like today if we’d just re-elected President Howard Dean.

I mean, there would have been some co-opting, right? Just like Obama’s team is (too late, I think) trying to mobilize OFA to “support health care reform” and marginalize the left-of-the-left, wouldn’t Dean’s team have required some order and discipline that we were free from 2004-2009?

On the one hand, we would not have been so needed or so frustrated. But on the other hand, our pain-in-the-assness might have needed order & discipline.

Just practicing my fast typing skills! I don’t want to let the questions about measuring effectiveness slide by. I look at three measures of effectiveness, circa 2006-2008: political effectiveness, shaping mainstream media frames, and community building. I look at several metrics of political effectiveness, from small-dollar fundraising to candidate recruitment to successfully promoting candidates at the non-federal level, and on a number of these measures, the Netroots have done very well. The results on shaping media narratives are far less strong. And, the community-building results — the dynamic that interested me in the Netroots in the first place — are off the charts.

khin @ 12 asked how dailykos got to be so big. I haven’t seen an A yet (scuse me if I overlooked it), but I’d be interested in the A too.

Thanks for the explanation of sitemeter. I’m not interested in the weeds, so your info is good enough. If I did your kind of research, I’d find the discussions about the measurement problems critical. When I was a Wall St. economist, I wouldn’t use any data that I didn’t know how it was constructed.

Matt, at Netroots you gave a quick overview of the history of how technology influenced the political – who was the first to use the tech and gain the advantage. Has this held true for the internet?

Mr. Kerbel, you talk extensively about “progressive” netroots and “conservative” netroots. But how are you defining progressive?

In my experiences on Daily Kos, which I have written a sharp critique of here, I found the opinions their editors expressed on health care to actually be less left wing than the general public in important ways.

So what’s progressive? Economic or social, for example?

We’re pains in asses because they don’t do the right policy. If they did that, we’d be whipped into shape instantly. And in the case of necessary compromises, we can understand explanations, if the pols would take the time to do it, instead of keeping all that stuff secret.

Uh what kind of Comment to viewer ratio do the best Righty Blogs have? Do the Righty blogs censor more than us? Some people here have said their comments get erased but then again some people here are always finding some real nasty hate speech in the comments and posts that is left up on the Righty blogs.
I guess my question is Lefty views censored hate speech/threats of violence is alright on the righty blogs?
I think here threats of violence and some swearing bad but otherwise the trolls can stay?

You’re tapping into a key political dynamic, Teddy — the relationship between order and control on the one hand and empowerment on the other. This is a difficult balance to strike in politics, because campaigns and administrations are built around a command-and-control model. But, if the political “magic” of the Internet requires tapping into the decentralized, horizontal, open structure of the web, how, then, do you find that balance and work it effectively? Dean, operating with a much more primitive Internet, suffered from his inability to control his campaign (actually, I’d contend that Dean’s downfall turned on his inability to master the more conventional elements of television politics). As president, Obama is governing in a much more traditional, top-down fashion than his campaign might have suggested he would.

Hi Jane, thanks for having us!

I’ve read a few academic papers about facebook activism, most of them frustrating. My impressions are that:

1. the “causes” application that was supposed to be radically transformative has kinda been a dud

2. facebook is very useful for letting existing networks of activists stay connected with each other and enhance their connectivity. It makes small group coordination waaaaay simpler.

3. but most of the activist campaign attempts *I’ve* seen on facebook (and I may have missed plenty, so YMMV) are what I call “32 pieces of flair” actions. Getting people to sign up for a facebook group that they never visit again isn’t a major advance in political activism, particularly compared to what we’ve seen from the blogosphere, the Dean and Obama campaigns, MoveOn, etc. It leads to slightly more political information passed out to our social networks, but mostly people are joining “facebook groups” that have fun or funny names, and there’s almost never a second step after joining. So I’d label myself a “facebook activism skeptic,” at least at this point.

thank you for this interesting topic. Why is it that even the most dedicated netroots cannot seem to get people on the streets, although they have done an amazing job of summoning electronic forces (e-mails, faxes, and phones) to action? How far away are we from putting crowds in the streets and what will it take to get us there collectively? What role does anonymity play in dissent on the internet as opposed to physical demonstrations in the streets?

Can there be real change without large demonstrations?

If you (or anyone else) is interested in the weeds, hop over to my professional website (www.davidkarpf.com) and click on one of the blog-related conference papers. I spend waaaaay too much time worrying about this stuff.

And yep, the measurement problems make me pull my hair out at least once a month.

I think we’re seeing this emerge before our eyes, Bev. In the book, I look at four periods in our history when new technology was utilized by an individual or group to help transform the political process. Jackson did it with his creative use of inexpensive printing, Lincoln with the telegraph, FDR with radio, and Nixon (yes, Nixon) with television. In each case, the medium in question had been around for some time before someone figured out how to use it *differently* — and in a way that enabled them to get results that others had not. The Internet is still a young medium compared to some of these others at the point when their influence became transformational. We may have seen a turning point with the 2008 Obama campaign as it relates to electoral politics, but thus far I’m not seeing it as a matter of governance.

That’s what I mean when I use the term elite. And, yes, ThingsComeUndone, you can do all this and still eat Cheetos if you like!

Sorry over reacting Bush, GOPers and Media jerks in three piece suits who have never froze their ass off in -20 degree weather working calling me Elite even though I am smarter than them, as if thats a big accomplishment piss me off.
Good Talk though Matt!

Wouldn’t the fight over Net Neutrality fall directly into this and the future use of the Net?

HotAir.com in November 2007 was getting about 135,000 hits/day and 1,000 comments/day. (I have the 2009 data, but its not readily accessible so let’s go with these #s for the time being). The HUGE difference is that HotAir and other blogs require users to register before they can comment, but have a closed registration policy. No new users can register and join their sites.

Hi, Jane, and thank you for inviting me today. I have to agree with Dave’s response. I’m willing to be convinced, but I don’t see Facebook as being in any sense revolutionary, and I’m not familiar with any academic work to date that suggests it will be.

I don’t do weeds anymore. Don’t miss it either. But I try to judge others’ work by how careful they are about that stuff, so thanks for the reference.

I went to a few town halls so did others here however have we really tried to organize a big protest?

Absolutely, dakine01. Netroots activists know it, and they’ve been on top if it. And that’s perhaps a good example of what I mean when I use the term “elite” in respect to Netroots activism. Net Neutrality isn’t an issue that moves the mass public. It’s not going to be featured on television news. I would bet most people don’t know what it is. But it matters here.

short-version answer on how DailyKos got so big (and Matt has some great long-version stuff in chapter 6):

Markos was the first blogger to switch over to the “Scoop” community blogging platform. That was in the fall of ‘03. Before that, no blogs had diaries, which meant that blogger conversations had to occur across various sites. Markos hooked into a technological innovation that let the netroots community start gathering in a single online space. From there, his site has gone on to continually attract the largest portion of the community, though other large hubs like this one, OpenLeft, MyDD, etc have come out as well.

No new users can register and join their sites.

I am not understanding this nobody new can register? Is this at all some or only the big GOP sites? Just who is the invisible hand making that decision for the Righty Blogs Karl afraid of us snooping?

I presume the D & R parties have blogs. What is the status of them?

IMO, not on health care reform, which would be a natural because it affects all citizens. There was a brief try with the masters of the universe, but it wasn’t taken very seriously.

135,000 hits/day and 1,000 comments/day

80,000 hits/day and 2,000 comments we are doing quite well lots of ideas.

The Internet allows users to pursue inside strategies, like whip counts, which would not be available to ordinary people operating with a centralizing medium like television. So, when you think about activism, you should think inside as well as outside.

Me too. What does this mean? You have to register, but, what? After a certain amount of members, it’s cut off?
I’m wondering because, yesterday (well, and today) we’ve had a few frequent attacks from some folks who may or may not be (I’m not the wizard) paid trolls and I thought I saw a mention of things perhaps changing in the future of this site in terms of being more selective who can register. Something like that. I don’t want to quote anyone (the owner of this site) because it’s not within my purview.

How to explain the loyal readership and vast influence of Andrew Sullivan, who is so often wrong and permits no comments? Does his reputation stem from his legacy media background, or The Village’s flirtation with bad-boy turncoats, or simply being the Permitted Political Homosexual?

They’re pretty tiny, with maybe a few exceptions.

Big blogs have big communities engaging around them. That takes time, commitment, and a willingness to trust the community. That works much better for social movement organizations (of which netroots sites are the latest iteration in American history) than it does for formal political parties. Structurally, I’m actually not sure that the D & R parties *can* develop healthy, active, high-participation blogs…

actual language from Hotair’s “about” page:

Comments Registration Policy
Only registered Hot Air users can leave comments on our site. Registration is now closed. That means if you haven’t already registered, you cannot comment. Sorry. We will let you know if and when we re-open registration.

If it’s not money or sex, what could it be?

And I would add that I’m not sure they would be able to endure a community of the kind Dave describes if they were able to build it.

Crystal clear. Got it.
I’m imagining it has nothing to do with the size of their servers. Like they are a private club or a specifically closed circle, maybe?

Legacy bloggers are a different animal, because they come to blogging with a prefabricated media platform. And, in Andrew Sullivan’s case, I wonder how much traffic he gets when he’s quoted on the left.

Matt, drawing upon Teddy’s Andrew Sullivan question, that’s another element of the book I think people will be interested in: tell us a bit about what you found regarding Netroots battles with Joe Klein. Specifically, as mainstream opinion journalists start using the blogging format, what has the netroots pushback against them been like?

Not surprised. Political parties are definitely hierarchical and thus blogs wouldn’t be their thing. The Rs can get their top-down talking points out threw a few selective outlets, including the wingnut blogs, and maintain anonymity. No reason to have a blog of your own.

His charming accent.

yes. We’ve seen the evidence of that first-hand here. My question is have you thought about it outside?

Apparently, Michelle and company figure they’ve captured the vital few already and expect anyone new to be a troll. Or someone checking their facts.

Just went to Hot Air lots of comments more than we have been getting lately but no place to register for new commentors? Without new blood to replace people who get busy, family, jobs etc it seems unlikely they could maintain those numbers.
I smell Ringers.

Yeah, it ain’t server size.

I have some theoretical work on the topic, will be doing more on it in the spring, and its hard to formulate a good answer in pithy format. But my sense is that a big part of why they’re making this choice is as a reaction to the existing size of the leftwing netroots. In particular, the netroots are big enough to allow for major comedy blogs like SadlyNo, and those blogs specialize in heckling conservative bloggers. If a conservative blogger is trying to build their nascent community, but is constantly getting whacked by SadlyNaughts, then they’re going to try to build some sort of defensive wall, even if that prevents them from building the healthy participation we see in the left!

I definitely need (and want!) to read your book. Until I do, I’m not sure I should comment too much.

But I am concerned about your use of the term “elite” in reference to those who use the internet for political activism.

What we’re talking about here is a new availability of knowledge and the fact that, until very recently, the power to participate politically by persuading others was limited to small groups that could be called “elite” precisely because their members combined their nearly exclusive access to certain knowledge to their ability to exert power in other areas – i.e. economic and social.

People like me have nothing but a new access to knowledge, which I try to use to help Jane and FDL Action raise awareness about issues among concerned citizens and to raise money to take action, but mostly in small amounts at a time from others like me.

The term “elite” just doesn’t seem applicable to someone like me, who lacks ability to exert influence by means of any economic or social capital, which I don’t have enough of to make a difference on my own.

The internet has created a whole new vehicle for the dissemination of information and the ability of citizens to persuade others.

I have decided to use it to take action politically, but some term other than “elite” should be devised for people like me, no?

The pushback against traditional journalists like Joe Klein — which can be ferocious — is really pushback against his methods and the traditional model of journalism, which is built around objectivity manifested as balance. It’s at the heart of the power struggle I detail in “Netroots” — where Netroots activists are pushing against not just Democratic Party elites but the journalists that enable them, essentially the permanent political class. The greatest pushback is reserved for moments when those journalists engage in false balance in the name of objectivity, or regurgitate information without fact-checking. When the culprit is a self-described liberal like Klein, the outrage can be enormous. But, again, my premise is that the Netroots cannot be understood through an ideological lens, because the subtext of a struggle like this is power, not ideology.

Not to my ears. I got beyond that years ago. I hope. That and pretty boy good looks.
I’m much more selective now. Sometimes. *g*

Paid Trolls great question is there any evidence the GOP is paying Trolls or hackers?

I thought I saw a mention of things perhaps changing in the future of this site in terms of being more selective who can register.

How would that work hypothetically of course?

The most obvious outside strategy, emerson, is small dollar fundraising.

Could that be the reason that some lefty blogs are getting a lot of frustrated righty newbies? They want to rant, but where? It’s an interesting conundrum, well, maybe.

I haven’t seen nay evidence of it. That sort of thing would probably be a decent-sized scandal, so if it happens, expect to hear about it on Maddow or something…

He can bring the GOP moderate Voters if they ever choose to listen to him? He tries so hard to sound reasonable even when wrong.
Maybe he is gaming his numbers? GOPers hate Gays, Lefties don’t think much of him Moderates are not that intro politics so who is his audience?

I wondered years ago if Atrios would do something like this when the 609th Flying Monkey squadron would make one of its feces bombing runs on the site. But his numerous commenters would shoot them down as fast as they appeared and it all became unnecessary.

. Sorry. We will let you know if and when we re-open registration.

That answers my first question I thought for sure I misunderstood you but how do they keep the same commentors commenting at that level of comments?
I smell Ringers.

I understand your concern, Knoxville, and I appreciate why the term “elite” might seem undesirable. But, don’t underestimate the importance of your access to knowledge! Imagine where the healthcare debate would be tonight if not for the work of people like you and Jane and others who leverage their access to knowledge and communities to the point where your voices are influential. When I use the term “elite”, it’s to differentiate between efforts like these and the role ordinary people play in a system centered on a traditionally mass medium like television.

I’m hoping to get some clarification of this statement:

“The Left is better situated than the right to take advantage of open source Internet politics”

My experience with Daily Kos has been that, on the economic issue of health care, the editors are in fact not left wing compared with the general public. But on social issues, my guess would be that they are left wing.

So I’m hoping that Mr. Kerbel can clarify what, exactly, he means by the Left in his statement above.

You may want to talk to Jane about this. She might have some interesting theories, if not data for you. (And, she’s [like this] with Rachel, it seems. (Gawd, they’re so wonderful.)

Hmm, maybe. Certainly the lack of a good “hub” for rightwingers (except the uberfringe over at FreeRepublic) helps explain why newspaper sites, etc tend to have a bunch of random rightwing commenters.

What I’m less sure of, though, is whether FDL and other left blogs are getting *that* much more rightwingers hopping on now than before. There’s always been some of them. With numbers, we could crank out a baseline of how many “crossover newbies” usually come in per month, whether its rapidly rising right now (vs just a bit more noticeable), and whether its happened before due to regular events.

against his methods and the traditional model of journalism, which is built around objectivity manifested as balance.

Naw its all about Access, stenography and Its Ok If Your A Republican and Everything is Good For the Republicans.

Yep, I’m scribbling a bunch of notes to myself to follow up on later!

One of the points I try to make in “Netroots”, khin, is that the Netroots cannot be understood in traditional ideological terms, despite the ever-present characterization in the traditional press that there is a kind of ideological purity online that represents an out-of-the-mainstream, far-left perspective. I would apply this characterization to the broader progressive blogosphere, too — not just the editors at Daily Kos. When I use the term “left” I’m simply making a distinction that follows the linking pattern of political blogs, whereby the “left” blogosphere can be distinguished from the “right” blogosphere by their networking patterns.

I think some right wing blogs take precautions re registration, like asking newcomers to identify themselves by providing personal info and asking a series of questions. If the mods can’t verify the personal info or don’t like the answers to the “application,” then the newcomer never receives the email that would allow him or her to complete the registration.

demi @ 73

I don’t think Jane meant closing registration. May I ask which threads the possible paid trolls were on today?

I guess that’s another way to put it!

Good. I expect that Jane is up on this stuff, but you may want to get some feedback from her moderators. They are the ones in the trenches and have to deal with the line items.

Right, I really like how you handle that in the book. The progressive netroots are an identifiable network of people, organizing through new media to affect the political process. They don’t always agree with each other on policy preferences (anybody hang out on MyDD during the primaries?), but they do agree on some of the major ways that politics should be opened up, and they work together to accomplish those ends.

Thanks for your response, Mr. Kerbel. So, if I understand you correctly, your usage of the term “left” denotes a certain type of more democratic networking pattern, and is not actually related to political ideas?

I didn’t read it as closing registration either. There were several threads earlier in the day that had some more angry kerfuffuls.

Hot Air is apparently banning everyone new the why of this should be interesting are mobs of Lefties attacking their sites but I thought the GOP was the Majority? That and we Lefties still register people.
Without new sign ups for how long months, years Hot Air is still getting all these comments nobody has left commenting even for a little while?
With out X amount of new commentors where would the Lake be in 6 months a years as people leave get busy less time to write etc?

Matt, I want to toss another “big picture” question out there while you’re typing responses:

The blogosphere and networked politics change FAST. Book publishing is SLOW. What’s one thing that has happened since you submitted the manuscript that you really wish you could go back and put in there (and why)?

FDL gets a mild troll attack (at least mild in terms of what the mods let through) after Jane’s been on TV. We take care of them pretty efficiently. They don’t stay around long.

Exactly. And I think it’s useful to contrast Dave’s characterization with the power dynamic I was talking about earlier. Dave’s distinguishing policy from process, and at its core the progressive netroots wants to change the way politics is done in order to make progressive outcomes possible. I think that’s the best way to understand what’s happening with the healthcare debate. There are people on progressive blogs who advocate for different policy outcomes (single payer, for instance), but the overarching dynamic is about getting a bill that will benefit individuals rather than insurance and drug companies. And that can’t happen without changing the political process.

Complicating things further, HotAir has had that policy since at least the fall of ‘07. They may have opened it up for an hour or two a few times since then, but it’s been consistently closed for as long as I’ve been studying this stuff. Yet the site receives more traffic AND more comments than it did two years ago, by a longshot.

I am infinitely proud of my efforts to have an impact on the health care debate, am very thankful to Jane for this site, and do think that we all make a difference in so many ways (providing information and insights, as well as organizing here to write letters, to make phone calls, to raise money for ads from people who not so long ago would not have thought that their contributions would have had much of an impact).

But this knowledge is widely available to anyone who wants it. What makes something “elite” seems to me to be the exclusivity in important areas, i.e. economic and social.

We’re able to influence the elite, but does that make us elite?

Honestly, I ask this question more rhetorically as food for thought. I think there should be a term other than “elite” for what I am and what I am doing.

Yeah Al Gore, Climate Change, certain topics seem to trigger trolls some topics get whole legions of trolls.
Its almost like they all have the same alarm clock.

Yet the site receives more traffic AND more comments than it did two years ago, by a longshot.

This miracle is achieved by fraud, unless you can suggest something else?

The term Teabaggers seems to be the hot button for some the last couple of days. Maybe they have some sort of Alert System that lets them know when certain Buzz Terms or Catch Phrases are used on the web.

2 years ago FDL was smaller but many of the names were different.

Could be Tea Bagger Trolls watching us maybe we need Spies!

No question, book publishing follows a 20th (18th?) century model! I had to re-write large portions of “Netroots” last December in order to address the Obama campaign, because the version I had submitted the previous spring discussed in hypothetical terms the possibility that someday, someone would run a successful “hybrid” campaign that maximized the influence of the traditional and new media. Of course, as I was writing that, Obama was doing it. Since then, I wish I could add more perspective on the divergence between the Netroots and the Obama administration. I touch on this in the book — for instance, when some Netroots activists used Obama’s social networking tools to lobby against his position on FISA. There’s a lot more of that dynamic in play today, as the Netroots continue to exploit the decentralized advantages offered by the Internet while the White House plays it safe, following a largely traditional political playbook.

Well they’ve had a few changes that sensibly explain some of it, at least. They recruited “Captain Ed” and some other conservative bloggers with big followings to join the site (kinda like how FDL became home to TBogg and others). They must’ve done some short-term fix to let the regular commenters at those sites come in. And they’re good at the vertical integration Matt talks about in the book — generating traffic through cross-links with rightwing media.

It’s a puzzle, but not one so stark to make fraud the leading explanation (or at least there are a ton of other things I think are more reasonable and would want to read out first…)

Is this similar to the phenomenon that keeps the shadow-authored books of right wingers at the top of best seller lists?

They must’ve done some short-term fix to let the regular commenters at those sites come in

Until its proven what they allegedly did its all speculation. Its all Enron accounting.

That is an interesting comment about policy and process. My understanding of the term “progressive” was that it is a policy term; so process is necessary as a road to policy, but the definition is in terms of policy. What I wonder is whether Mr. Kerbel’s definition here is in agreement with that, or is it defined more in terms of process?

Thanks in advance for your response, Mr. Kerbel.

The FISA flare-up was when OFA learned how to govern, imho. A committed group of activists took the tools OFA provided and tried to influence the candidate. While those people stayed aboard for the election (some) I think that was a critical time in the recognition that Obama’s promise of openness and transparency wasn’t to be trusted.

On two levels: the betrayal on FISA as well as the horror at seeing their tools turned (against?) their own candidate. It had to be scary, and they put levers in place — still used in government — to be sure it never happened again.

I think so either that or the American people really BWAHhahaha! want to read the wit and wisdom of Sarah Palin:)

Let me ask a question, Knoxville: in what ways do you want to influence the elite? In other words, what would you consider to be a successful outcome, and not just on healthcare. Are you looking to change the way politics is done in this country? I ask this in the spirit of “food for thought”, because if the answer to my last question is some shade of yes, then it seems to me the only way that can happen is if you displace the prevailing elite and the structures on which they depend: television, big corporate money, and journalism based on objectivity and balance. And that leads to the question: what would we replace it with? What would that look like? From my perspective, and we may disagree on this, politics in this country has always been dominated by an elite of some sort, and at times shaped by movements run by elites. So, as you say, food for thought. I’m certainly open to other suggestions and I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Thank you Matthew and Dave. It’s been an interesting dialogue.
Best of luck to both of you. (And, thanks to Bev too.)

Question: would you say that millions of people using the internet to give small amounts of money to a presidential candidate constitutes an elite?

I don’t mean to harp on this topic, but I really do think that a term other than “elite” is necessary, or at least that the term needs to be qualified.

How about this? “An activist elite using the internet as a new form of political capital.” Or this? “An activist elite using the internet as a new way to generate political capital.”

Progressive is both a policy term and a reference to a historical movement. So I guess an offshoot of your question that I’d pose to Matt is “how do today’s netroots progressives compare to some of the historical movements you study in the book?”

I’d like to hear your comments about this:

“Netroots activists oppose the Democratic establishment as strongly as they opposed the Bush administration”

For me, that’s a little strong. What evidence do you have to support that?

Excellent questions.

For now, all I can tell you is that I very much need to read your book.

A net ocracy everyone who wants to reads up and argues policy and then votes. Ideas tested by thesis, antithesis synthesis as done by Moe Larry and Curly like we do here at the Lake:)

One of the observations I make in the book is that progressive policy objectives follow from a politics of community, so in that sense while progressives may (will) disagree on particulars, a politics of community would both mirror the communities that progressives have built online and would further progressive ends. It’s a variant of the old adage that good politics makes good policy.

thanks demi, nice talking with you!

That’s an interesting observation, Teddy.

My pleasure. Anything to help our causes. See you around the toobz.

Us or the Right? I think we have been more critical about Obama without needing to Lie than the Righty Blogs however we are not as critical at Obama as we were about Bush.
The Righty Blogs however are threatening violence we got Moded quick at even the slightest suggestion of that for Bush.

I’ll have to admit that I can’t quite understand how that answers my question. I’m sure if I read your book I would get your terminology better.

To expand on this:

Wars crimes and political malpractice differ hugely.

The millions giving money didn’t self-organize. Someone still had to ask, just like in traditional politics. The Internet makes that kind of mass activity possible, but I would distinguish the actions of many from the power the Internet gives those relatively smaller numbers of individuals who do much more. That said, I’d have no quarrel with your characterization of an activist elite using the Internet as a new form of political capital, Knoxville.

Late to the party – just have to say how nice it is to see that someone seems to “get” us here at FDL.
And I like the “social” part of your characterization of “left” blogs – over time, many of us commenters have come to know each other, and at specific times like Late Night, we exchange more personal info (and emotional support) than political. Haven’t seen anything like that at RW sites.

this is tasty food-for-thought, Knoxville. I’d say that “activist elite” is alright, as is “quasi-elite,” which is a term I’ve heard before. But I think it’s actually kind of important for us to colonize this term. Matt phrases it well above, talking about “displacing the prevailing elite.” FDL hasn’t displaced the entire party establishment, but it’s certainly displaced several of the longstanding advocacy groups and changed the balance of power in the democratic party coalition. that’s an elite activity, but not in the pejorative sense. It isn’t just “educating the masses,” it’s ACTION. And it’s action at the elite level of politics.

…So maybe we’re talking about making elite networks more porous, or expanding the range of who has power in American politics, but it’s still fundamentally challenging and displacing the elites that we had, creating the elites that we want.

(that’s totally just my $.02 though. Huge room for debate.)

As we come to the end of this Book Salon,

Matthew, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book and the netroots.

Dave, Thank you very much for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Everyone, this is a very good book, if you haven’t bought a copy yet, here is a link.

Thanks all.

Crap the late late nite crowd the personal stuff we could have explored that more !

Great Talk Great Questions Great topic!

Only so much time, Things – the poltical influence is doubtless the more significant, at least from a public policy pov. ; )

Thanks for the invitation, Bev. I’ve enjoyed the discussion with everyone.

That’s an excellent distinction.

You probably won’t, tejanarusa, because they’re not set up for it. And that element of support and personal bonding is critical to the larger political effort.

Great conversation, thanks so much, gentlemen.

We’re always open, please drop by anytime!

Moving this book to the top of the pile right now.

Thanks, Bev! And, thanks Dave for hosting and to everyone for all the interesting questions. I’ve enjoyed it greatly!

I think I like the second formulation better: “An activist elite using the internet as a new way to generate political capital.”

Thanks for coming to the Lake to discuss your book and your ideas. I’ve added your book to my Amazon cart and will complete the order once I’ve added a couple more things tonight.

Speaking of using the internet as a tool. I just got another email from the DCCC using the NY-23 situation to try to raise money.

Matt phrases it well above, talking about “displacing the prevailing elite.” FDL hasn’t displaced the entire party establishment, but it’s certainly displaced several of the longstanding advocacy groups and changed the balance of power in the democratic party coalition. that’s an elite activity, but not in the pejorative sense. It isn’t just “educating the masses,” it’s ACTION. And it’s action at the elite level of politics.

…So maybe we’re talking about making elite networks more porous, or expanding the range of who has power in American politics, but it’s still fundamentally challenging and displacing the elites that we had, creating the elites that we want.

Well put! Looking forward to reading Matthew Kerbel’s book.

Thanks for talking with us about it!