HW 17b: Where Do You Go For Political Advice?

I would definitely use Daily Kos as opposed to Wonkette for helping me decide who to vote for in the upcoming election. The Wonkette site is more tongue in cheek, sarcastic stuff and Daily Kos is more serious and scholarly, easier to trust. Wonkette is more about gossip and who is screwing who than about the candidates in the upcoming election. Ana Marie Cox evens says it in an interview in a book by Dan Burstein and David Kline called, Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture, “Wonkette is me after too many margaritas” (Cox 57). She doesn’t think the quality of blog writing is very good and argues that it is a creative output and that most often that is just not any good either. Daily Kos on the other hand takes themselves very seriously and they work to mobilize the politically active so that they can use their influence to win the upcoming election. I think the Wonkette is great for a laugh and some interesting tidbits, but when you want to get serious about the election I would head to Daily Kos.

HW 17: Issues such as these need all the attention they can get!

I chose Broadsheet to look for my favorite post of the week and I found a post called, Planned Parenthood Will See You Now written by Lynn Harris. I really enjoyed this post because in a world where the mainstream media is being tightly controlled this type of article is just what we need. It highlights the problems women are facing getting affordable healthcare, let alone being able to walk into a clinic without getting harassed. Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards explains that, “We are concerned that the struggles the Aurora center faced in opening may be reflective of a growing battle against politics trumping health care, and increased barriers to reproductive health care access” (qtd. in Harris). In making this comment Richards calls attention to the increasing politicizing of healthcare and how detrimental that is to Americans who really need medical attention. It is so important that these types of issues get the attention they deserve so kudos to Broadsheet!
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/10/03/aurora_clinic_opens/index.html

HW 13: Why Blogs Matter

Some people are under the impression that blogs have only to do with media, politics or personal issues. The argument made by Stephen Baker and Heather Green in an article called, Blogs Will Change Your Business in the book, Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture written by David Kline and Dan Burstein says, “if anyone thought blogs had only to do with media or politics or personal issues, they were missing one of the biggest elephants in the room: big business” (Baker, Green 221). While I understand that blogs will be very important to big business in terms of advertising and public image, at the same time the effect that they have had and will have on politics, social and personal ideas is going to be more profound. For example the short lived presidential campaign of Howard Dean proved that, “political bloggers can mobilize and unite large groups of citizens in ways that make insurgent candidates more viable” (Kline 14). The fact that blogs can have such an effect on something so important as who the next president is, and whether or not someone dies, (in the case of Ayelet Waldman whose blog readers alerted family of a suicide threat posted on her blog) is more important in the long run than big business making even more money.

HW 11: Can Bloggers Change the International Political Scene?

I chose to review a blog called The Kenyan Pundit, started by a Harvard law student named Ory Okollah who is from Kenya. The first thing you notice is the somewhat blurry aerial picture of what appears to be a street in Kenya. There are many links on the side to other relevant blogs, including some sarcastic ones like, “People Magazine is so 2004” with links to their stories underneath. It seems to me that only Ory Okolloh blogs on it and others leave their comments. There is a column that links all of the different categories she writes about some of which are titled, Africa, Africa and Blogs, American Politics, and Development and Aid. The style of writing varies with the categories, if she is writing under her Baby KP category she is pretty informal but with the political blogs she is more formal.
In reading an interview titled, Making Global Voices Heard with Rebecca MacKinnon in David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture MacKinnon reports, “Basically she [Okolloh] has become a hub figure who has spawned the growth of the Kenyan blogosphere” (MacKinnon 330). What MacKinnon is saying is that by having such a blog in existence it is linking other such bloggers and making them all be a part of the political scene. I agree with MacKinnon’s assessment of the blog, it really does have all the aspects needed to create discussion and change. Although I grant that some might say that these blogs are still in their very early days and can’t make such a significant change so easily, I still maintain that just the existence of such blogs opens the doors for open communication and that is the very foundation of democracy.

HW 5b: Whose Voice Matters Most?

In, I Blog, Therefore I Am a piece in David Kline’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture Kline urges the readers to see the effect of the accessibility of blogs to everyone, not just the typical elite, educated scholars. Kline emphasizes this with saying that we have already witnessed this dramatic shift in the way that political bloggers have played such a high profile role in bringing about change in the political arena. He also argues that it is affecting the cultural and arts arena.
In my view, however the traditional elite’s opinion will always hold sway over any others. It doesn’t matter that the ordinary now has a voice as well, the elites opinion will still be respected more that the non-elites. I think it’s a great thing that the ordinary person now has the access to voice their own opinion in matters where before their opinion didn’t count. Just because their voices are now being heard doesn’t mean that the elite’s voice will not. In fact all one has to do is make sure that they know whose opinion they are hearing, and make their judgments based on that.

HW 3: Who Critiques Who?

In discussions of Blog How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture by, David Kline and Dan Burstein one controversial issue has been blogs and their effect on media and politics. On the one hand some people say that nobody reads blogs and therefore they have no effect. On the other hand Kline and Burstein among others argue that bloggers are transforming the political arena and are giving everyone a voice. In my opinion it used to be the media’s job to critique society, especially politics and the government. They haven’t been able to do their job successfully for a long time now. Most will claim to be non partisan (Fox News) but everyone knows they are conservative. There are complaints that bloggers will criticize the media for how they do their job and the media responds by saying that they should give it a try and see how easy it is. That isn’t the bloggers job though, just like it used to be the media’s job to critique the government, now it is the bloggers job to critique the media!