In this article, the authors compare the practices of discursive production among top U.S. political blogs on the left and right during summer 2008. An examination of the top 155 political blogs reveals significant cross-ideological variations along several dimensions. Notably, the authors find evidence of an association between ideological affiliation and the technologies, institutions, and practices of participation. Blogs on the left adopt different, and more participatory, technical platforms, comprise significantly fewer sole-authored sites, include user blogs, maintain more fluid boundaries between secondary and primary content, include longer narrative and discussion posts, and (among the top half of the blogs in the sample) more often use blogs as platforms for mobilization. The findings suggest that the attenuation of the news producer-consumer dichotomy is more pronounced on the left wing of the political blogosphere than on the right. The practices of the left are more consistent with the prediction that the networked public sphere offers new pathways for discursive participation by a wider array of individuals, whereas the practices of the right suggest that a small group of elites may retain more exclusive agenda-setting authority online. The cross-ideological divergence in the findings illustrates that the Internet can be adopted equally to undermine or to replicate the traditional distinction between the production and consumption of political information. The authors conclude that these findings have significant implications for the study of prosumption and for the mechanisms by which the networked public sphere may or may not alter democratic participation relative to the mass mediated public sphere.

Adamic, L., Glance, N. ( 2005 ). The political blogosphere and the 2004 US election: Divided they blog . In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Link Discovery, The Eleventh ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ‘05) (pp. 36 - 43 ). New York, NY : ACM Press .

Google Scholar

Adamic, L., Huberman, B. ( 2000 ). Power law distribution of the World Wide Web . Science, 287, 2115 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Armstrong, J., Moulitsas Zúñiga, M. ( 2006 ). Crashing the gate: Netroots, grassroots and the rise of people-powered politics. White River Junction, VT : Chelsea Green .

Google Scholar

Bai, M. ( 2007 ). The argument: Billionaires, bloggers, and the battle to remake democratic politics. New York, NY : Penguin .

Google Scholar

Baker, C. E. ( 2001 ). Media, markets, and democracy. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Barabási, A. L. ( 2003 ). Linked: How everything is connected to everything else and what it means. New York, NY : Penguin .

Google Scholar

Barnouw, E. ( 1966 ). A tower in Babel: A history of broadcasting in the United States. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press .

Google Scholar

Barzilai-Nahon, K., Hemsley, J., Walker, S., Hussain, M. ( 2011 ). Fifteen minutes of fame: The power of blogs in the lifecycle of viral political information . Policy and Internet, 3(1). Retrieved from http://www.psocommons.org/policyandinternet/vol3/iss1/art2

Google Scholar

Beniger, J. R. ( 1986 ). The control revolution. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .

Google Scholar

Benkler, Y. ( 1998a , September 1988 ). The commons as neglected factor of information production. Paper presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference , Alexandria, VA .

Google Scholar

Benkler, Y. ( 1998b ). Communications infrastructure regulation and the distribution of control over content . Telecommunications Policy, 22(3), 183 - 196 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Benkler, Y. ( 1999 ). Free as the air to common use: First Amendment constraints on enclosure of the public domain . New York University Law Review, 74, 354 - 446 .

Google Scholar ISI

Benkler, Y. ( 2000 ). From consumers to users: Shifting the deeper structures of regulation towards sustainable commons and user access . Federal Communications Law Journal, 52, 561 - 597 .

Google Scholar

Benkler, Y. ( 2002 ). Coase’s penguin, or, Linux and the nature of the firm . Yale Law Journal, 112(3), 369 - 446 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Benkler, Y. ( 2003 ). Freedom in the commons: Towards a political economy of information . Duke Law Journal, 52, 1245 - 1276 .

Google Scholar ISI

Benkler, Y. ( 2006 ). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press .

Google Scholar

Bowers, C., Stoller, M. ( 2005 ). Emergence of the progressive blogosphere: A new force in American politics. Washington, DC : New Politics Institute . Retrieved from http://www.newpolitics.net/node/87?full_report=1

Google Scholar

Boyle, J. ( 2003 ). The second enclosure movement and the construction of the public domain . Law and Contemporary Problems, 66, 33 - 74 .

Google Scholar

Boyle, J. ( 2008 ). The public domain: Enclosing the commons of the mind. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press .

Google Scholar

Castells, M. ( 1996 ). The rise of the network society. Malden, MA : Blackwell .

Google Scholar

Drezner, D., Farrell, H. ( 2008 ). The power and politics of blogs . Public Choice, 134, 15 - 30 .

Google Scholar ISI

Eisenstein, E. L. ( 1979 ). The printing press as an agent of change. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press .

Google Scholar

Habermas, J. ( 1962 ). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. London, UK : Polity .

Google Scholar

Haidt, J., Graham, J., Joseph, C. ( 2009 ). Above and below left-right: Ideological narratives and moral foundations . Psychological Inquiry, 20, 110 - 119 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Hargittai, E. ( 2000 ). Open portals or closed gates? Channeling content on the World Wide Web . Poetics, 27, 233 - 253 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Hargittai, E. ( 2009 , February ). Digital na(t)ives? The role of skill in Internet use. Presentation at the MIT-Harvard Economic Sociology Seminar , Cambridge, MA .

Google Scholar

Hargittai, E., Gallo, J., Kane, M. ( 2008 ). Cross-ideological discussions among conservative and liberal bloggers . Public Choice, 134, 67 - 86 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Hargittai, E., Walejko, G. ( 2008 ). The participation divide: Content creation and sharing in the digital age . Information, Communication, and Society, 11(2), 239 - 256 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Hindman, M. ( 2008 ). The myth of digital democracy. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Google Scholar

Innis, H. A. ( 1951 ). The bias of communication. Toronto, Canada : University of Toronto Press .

Google Scholar

Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., Sulloway, F. J. ( 2003 ). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition . Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339 - 375 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., Slovic, P., Gastil, J., Cohen, G. L. ( 2007 ). The second national risk and culture study: Making sense of—and making progress in—the American culture war of fact (Public Law Working Paper No. 154). Yale Law School , New Haven, CT . Retrieved from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1017189

Google Scholar

Kapor, M. ( 1993 ). Where is the digital highway really heading? The case for a Jeffersonian information policy . Wired, 1(3), 53 - 59 .

Google Scholar

Karpf, D. ( 2008a , March ). Measuring influence in the political blogosphere: Who’s winning and how can we tell? Politics and Technology Review, pp. 33 - 41 . Retrieved from http://www.asiaing.com/politics-and-technology-review-march-2008.html

Google Scholar

Karpf, D. ( 2008b ). Understanding blogspace . Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 5(4), 369 - 385 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Keeter, S., Horowitz, J. M., Tyson, A. ( 2008 ). Gen Dems: The party’s advantage among young voters widens. Washington, DC : Pew Research Center for the People and the Press . Retrieved from http://pewresearch.org/pubs/813/

Google Scholar

Kerbel, M. R. ( 2009 ). Netroots: Online progressives and the transformation of American politics. Boulder, CO : Paradigm .

Google Scholar

Krippendorff, K. ( 2004 ). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology ( 2nd ed. ). Thousand Oaks, CA : SAGE .

Google Scholar

Lakhani, K., von Hippel, E. 2003 . How open source software works: “Free” user-to-user assistance . Research Policy, 32(6), 932 - 943 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Lampe, C., Johnston, E., Resnick, P. ( 2007 ). Follow the reader: Filtering comments on Slashdot . In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI2007) (pp. 1253 - 1262 ). New York, NY : ACM Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Lawrence, E., Sides, J., Farrell, H. ( 2010 ). Self-segregation or deliberation? Blog readership, participation, and polarization in American politics . Perspectives on Politics, 8(1), 141 - 157 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Lessig, L. ( 2001 ). The future of ideas: The fate of the commons in a connected world. New York, NY : Random House .

Google Scholar

Lessig, L. ( 2008 ). Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. New York, NY : Penguin .

Google Scholar Crossref

Litman, J. ( 2004 ). Sharing and stealing . Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, 27(1), 1 - 50 .

Google Scholar

McChesney, R. W. ( 1993 ). Telecommunications, mass media, and democracy: The battle for the control of U.S. broadcasting, 1928-1935. New York, NY : Oxford University Press .

Google Scholar

McLuhan, M. ( 1962 ). The Gutenberg galaxy: The making of typographic man. Toronto, Canada : University of Toronto Press .

Google Scholar

Moglen, E. ( 1999 ). Anarchism triumphant: Free software and the death of copyright . First Monday, 4(8). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/684

Google Scholar

Moody, G. ( 2001 ). Rebel code: Linux and the open source revolution. New York, NY : Perseus .

Google Scholar

Moulitsas Zúñiga, M. ( 2008 ). Taking on the system: Rules for radical change in a digital era. New York, NY : Penguin .

Google Scholar

Negroponte, N. ( 1995 ). Being digital. New York, NY : Knopf .

Google Scholar

Reno vs. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 ( 1997 ).

Google Scholar

Ritzer, G. ( 2009 , March ). Correcting an historical error. Keynote address at the Conference on Prosumption , Frankfurt, Germany .

Google Scholar

Ritzer, G., Jurgenson, N. ( 2010 ). Production, consumption, prosumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital “prosumer.” Journal of Consumer Culture, 10, 13 - 36 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Schudson, M. ( 2002 ). The news media as political institutions . Annual Review of Political Science, 5(1), 249 - 269 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Shirky, C. ( 2008 ). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York, NY : Penguin Press .

Google Scholar

Smith, A. ( 2009 ). The Internet’s role in campaign 2008. Pew Internet and American Life Project . Washington, DC : Pew Research Center . Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/6--The-Internets-Role-in-Campaign-2008.aspx

Google Scholar

Starr, P. ( 2005 ). The creation of the media: Political origins of modern communication. New York, NY : Basic Books .

Google Scholar

Sunstein, C. R. ( 2002 ). Republic.com. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Google Scholar

Sunstein, C. R. ( 2007 ). Republic.com 2.0. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Google Scholar

Toffler, A. ( 1980 ). The third wave. New York, NY : Bantam Books .

Google Scholar

Vaidhyanathan, S. ( 2004 ). The anarchist in the library: How the clash between freedom and control is hacking the real world and crashing the system. New York, NY : Basic Books .

Google Scholar

Wallsten, K. ( 2007 ). Agenda setting and the blogosphere: An analysis of the relationship between mainstream media and political blogs . Review of Policy Research, 24(6), 567 - 587 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Wallsten, K. ( 2008 ). Political blogs: Transmission belts, soapboxes, mobilizers, or conversation starters? Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 4(3), 19 - 40 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Wickham, H. ( 2009 ). ggplot2: Elegant graphics for data analysis. New York, NY : Springer .

Google Scholar Crossref