Evidence

If you, like me, kind of had this sense that liberals were dominating the internet here's the actual evidence. I think it's possible to over-read this trend. The Bush years generally, and the 2003-2006 period in particular, naturally gave liberals more to complain about. And this came at a period when conservatives utterly owned the radio and were predominant in television punditry as well. So it's naturally that the internet void filled up with what was around to do the filling -- lots of liberal energy, relatively little from the right.

In one sense, though, the web really is better suited to progressives. The big difference between the progressive political coalition in American and the conservative one is that the members of the progressive coalition have much less in common with each other than do the members of the conservative coalition. The web, where the general idea is to narrowcast, is just a better fit for an assortment of demographic groups that tends to be pretty miscellaneous in terms of anything other than voting for Democrats.

Comments

It seems to me that members of the progressive coalition have much more in common with each other than do the members of the conservative coalition, and that demographically, only of type is widely represented on the web, anyway.

Cons have fundies, regular social conservatives, and socially liberal conservatives, nativists, conservatarians, etc. On top of demographic cleavages.

I don't see any sharply defined ideological subgroups among progressives.

Posted by David Weman | May 21, 2007 9:07 AM

I think that, in addition to the fact that the right owns hate radio, and has far too much control over other media, there's a matter of lack of distortion.

Perhaps blogs show a truer picture of the American people. Not that it's pretty distorted, but the huge distortion of multi-billion dollar corporate interests is not present. We're not used to that.

Posted by Barry | May 21, 2007 9:12 AM

"I don't see any sharply defined ideological subgroups among progressives."

Populism vs. technocracy. Centrism vs. leftism. Isolationism/nativism vs. one-world types. Varying degrees of social conservatism, esp. vis a vis African-Americans and white urban seculars. Need I go on?

Posted by Dan Miller | May 21, 2007 9:14 AM

Interesting how perceptions change. I remember the line around 2002-03 or so, that the world of blogs was divided into the "techbloggers" who tended to be left-of-center and the more political "warbloggers" who leaned to the right: the warbloggers were supposed to have been the people who brought political discourse to the web in a big way, post-9/11. Of course it was never exactly true, though the atmosphere after late 2001 certainly brought right-wing bloggers new prominence (and, remember, LGF started out as a tech blog with a lot of talk about Web techniques).

Posted by Matt McIrvin | May 21, 2007 9:15 AM

The internet also better suits people who want to argue, debate, and challenge each other, i.e., Democrats.

Whereas talk radio, with its adulatory "reader call-ins" that do nothing to modulate its monological format and leader-worship, is better suited to Republicans.

(I'm not web-savvy enough to answer this, actually, but what major liberal blogs have no comment threads? Compared to what major conservative blogs?)

Posted by Anderson | May 21, 2007 9:29 AM

Populism vs. technocracy. Centrism vs. leftism.

These are simply marketing labels.

Isolationism/nativism vs. one-world types.

I don't think there are many liberals who believe in invading countries to export freedom and democracy unless you consider Peter Beinart and Ken Pollack as liberals.

Varying degrees of social conservatism, esp. vis a vis African-Americans and white urban seculars.

Even among African-Americans, it's difficult to find many who wish to imprison women who have abortions.

Posted by Dan the Man | May 21, 2007 9:39 AM

The big difference between the progressive political coalition in American and the conservative one is that the members of the progressive coalition have much less in common with each other than do the members of the conservative coalition.

Is this the same as saying that the conservative political coalition relies much more heavily on message discipline and authoritative statements from political and social leaders than the liberal coalition? Perhaps it's more about the top-down versus bottom-up flow of ideas distinction rather than any inherent diversity in the groups (as the linked article suggests).

Posted by RSA | May 21, 2007 10:05 AM

The big difference between the progressive political coalition in American and the conservative one is that the members of the progressive coalition have much less in common with each other than do the members of the conservative coalition.

This was the common wisdom in the 90's, but I'm not so sure that its actually true, or at least true anymore. It's true that DEMOCRATS have much less in common with each other than REPUBLICANS, due to the big tent philosophy of the Democratic party, but not all of the Democratic Party is part of the "progressive coalition" (again, due to the "big tent" philosophy). Look around and you'll see Democrats who refuse to call themselves "liberal" or "progressive" and even make a point of refusing to take on these descriptions. You don't see a Republican who refuses to call himself a "conservative" anymore.

However, the current progressive political coalition seems to have a stronger underlying sense of shared values than the conservative political coalation, mainly because the word "conservative" is meaningless as a descriptor of political viewpoints anymore.

Posted by NonyNony | May 21, 2007 10:20 AM

1) Whenever I see a claim, I like to look at the underlying data supporting it. In this case, Matthew points to a Washington Post article which in turn points to something called Nielsen NetRatings.

2) Which is very interesting -- because Nielsen Netratings also put out a press release a few months ago saying that there are a LOT more Republicans on the Internet than there are Democrats.

From http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_061101.pdf
-------------
NEW YORK – November 1, 2006 – Nielsen//NetRatings, a global leader in Internet media and market research, announced today that 36.6 percent of U.S. adults online are
Republicans, 30.8 percent are Democrats and 17.3 percent are Independents. With campaign Web sites becoming increasingly important to reaching the electorate, candidates need to keep their fingers on the political pulse of the Internet.

The Web site with the highest concentration of Republicans was RushLimbaugh.com,
with an 84.8 percent Republican audience (see Table 1). NewsMax.com and Bill
O’Reilly.com ranked No. 2 and 3, with audiences that were 65.4 percent Republican.
The Drudge Report and Salt Lake Tribune rounded out the top five Republican sites
with 59.0 and 57.9 composition percent.

Among Democrats, the top three sites were BlackAmericaWeb.com, AOL BlackVoices
and BET.com with audiences that were 79.9 percent, 64.8 percent and 58.6 percent
Democratic, respectively. Salon.com and Village Voice ranked fourth and fifth
among Democrats, with 55.3 and 55.2 composition percent.
--------------

Posted by Don Williams | May 21, 2007 11:15 AM

1) Re Matthew's comment "The web ...
is just a better fit for an assortment of demographic groups that tends to be pretty miscellaneous in terms of anything other than voting for Democrats"
--------
You mean "miscellaneous" in terms of electing Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman to office for decades?

You mean "miscellaneous" in terms of Senator Chuck Schumer holding the biggest pot of Democratic Campaign Contributions -- the DSCC -- while also belonging to a pro-Israel propaganda organization called Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) --whose Board of Advisors consists of Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer, Charles Krauthammer, Zell Miller,etc??
See http://www.defenddemocracy.org/biographies/biographies.htm

FDD's front page is currently wailing about the unfair treatment John Bolton recently received in the British press. See http://www.defenddemocracy.org/

Posted by Don Williams | May 21, 2007 11:34 AM

Right wing Drudgereport.com's visit meter says he's received over 9.5 MILLION visitors in the last 24 hours.

So how many has Matthew received
here at this blog?

Posted by Don Williams | May 21, 2007 11:41 AM

Dan the Man:

"Even among African-Americans, it's difficult to find many who wish to imprison women who have abortions."

The RTL types don't want to imprison women who have abortions either, they want to imprison the doctors who perform abortions.

Posted by James B. Shearer | May 21, 2007 2:07 PM

The RTL types don't want to imprison women who have abortions either, they want to imprison the doctors who perform abortions.

Interesting point of view. However, as anyone who takes even a cursory look at the Human Rights Amendments offered by the Right To Life forces can see, the proposed Amendments would make women who have abortions subjects to criminal sanction just as much as doctors. Therefore, their protests to the contrary cannot be taken seriously.

Posted by Dan the Man | May 21, 2007 3:12 PM

I agree that the distinction is between Dem's vs. Rep's, rather than progressives vs conservatives. I'm one of those democrats who finds far-left liberals to be more than a little off. And yet, I very much self-identify as a democrat, from a long line of democrats, etc.

To use a 14th/15th century analogy: The Democrats are like the Scottish, split into little clans, and make war with one another more often than they do with their collective "enemy". The Republicans are like the English. They may have differences internally, but they always come at you with a relatively uniform agenda.

The big tent quality of the Democratic Party is its' greatest strength and its' greatest weakness. But, that's all part of the fun.

Posted by Saij | May 21, 2007 3:17 PM

I agree with Matt. There was a media void and Internet filled that void.

Throughout the 90s I had to search hard to find genuine liberal voices. Talk radio and cable TV were dominated by right wingers. Op-ed pages often balaced foaming at the mouth right wingers with timid centrists or worse pox on both houses snarkists like Maureen Dowd. There was a void and yet the MSM ignored the void. Sunday gasbag shows often paired the partisan rightists like Robert Novak and Bill Safire with David Broder for "balance". I had pretty much given up on talk radio and talk TV and so called liberals in op-ed pages were an embarrassment.

Then came the Internet blogs and all of a sudden there was Matt Yglesias, Brad DeLong, Josh Marshall and I was looking forward to reading what they had to say about a whole host of issues. The blogs filled a void for people like me.

I don't see this dynamic changing. I don't see the corporate media giants hiring genuine liberals, especially on TV. But thanks to the Internet liberal perspective will be heard.

Posted by DonB | May 21, 2007 4:06 PM

Re; Rush/O'Reilly/Drudge sites

One big difference between conservative and liberal websites; conservative sites echo conservative opinion of talk radio/TV. Liberal websites supplement talk radio/TV.

Rush/O'Reilly/Drudge websites could shut down tomorrow and it wouldn't make a difference. You could get their perspectives from listening to talk radio or watching cable TV. If liberal websites disappeared there would be a huge void. Their views are not found in MSM.

Posted by DonB | May 21, 2007 4:17 PM

I think a big part of the general socially liberal orientation of the internet is due to its origins. When the internet was first getting started, most users were programmers, followed shortly by geeks of other sorts. When other groups started using it regularly, they took their tonal and organizational cues from the social structures that had already been set up by the programmers. The political culture of hackerdom has been described as "Vaguely liberal-moderate, except for the strong libertarian contingent". This is replicated on the web, partially because it was imprinted into the culture from a very early stage.

Posted by zzedar | May 21, 2007 10:43 PM