Written by Stephanie Miles, a freelance writer for Guide to Online Schools, an accredited online degrees and online college website.

From major blogs like the Huffington Post and Daily Kos to the smaller, more niche sites like FiveThirtyEight, it is impossible to ignore the impact that bloggers have had on politics over the course of the past few years.

From 2003 to 2005, the number of Americans who reported that they regularly read one or more blogs increased from 11 percent to 58 percent, according to surveys done by the Pew Research Group. These figures reflect just how quickly the medium has expanded in a short period of time.

Still, despite the sheer number of niche websites that are run by individual writers out of their own homes, a relatively small number of bloggers still comprise the top echelon of online political power players — and research has found that less than a dozen bloggers account for 20 percent of all incoming links to political websites in The United States.

Spreading the Message

Thanks to the advent of political blogging, hot topic discussions and political beliefs that were once limited to conversations between friends can now be expressed and discussed across the globe. The structure of blogs has allowed writers to post their opinion on the Web and seek immediate feedback from followers in the comments.

While bloggers such as Matt Drudge have among the largest — and most loyal — online followings, it is the individual writers working from their home computers who have begun wielding the most influence, as their opinionated posts catch on and get forwarded from person-to-person.

If nothing else, blogging has democratized the political sphere — allowing any person with an internet connection to share his or her opinions with the world.

Newspapers Struggle to Stay Current

At the same time that political blogs have grown in influence, the readership of many major daily newspapers has fallen.

To many, the changes have served to spread the process of influence and persuasion in the country, as individual writers now have the ability to reach audiences in the same way that only paid newspaper opinion columnists were once able to do before the introduction of blogging.

According to a 2008 survey, 22 percent of Americans say they read one or more political blogs. While this may seem like a small figure compared to the number who watch the nightly news or read the morning newspaper, reaching 1/4 of Americans can yield great influence in any election.

To combat the effect, many metropolitan newspapers have begun scrambling to catch up — adding blog content to their websites in an effort to regain some of the foothold they have lost to individual bloggers. Despite a valiant effort, many readers have been reluctant to latch on to blogs posted by their favorite newspapers, choosing instead to continue clicking in to popular blogs like the Drudge Report and Politico.com.

Galvanizing at the Grassroots Level

It isn’t just big-time political bloggers themselves who have found success on the Internet. The increase in blog readership has created a new medium for finding likeminded individuals and organizing grassroots events that were all but impossible to establish before the advent of political blogging.

Persuasive bloggers and well-connected political groups can gain a loyal following online, as interested readers check out their blog each day and forward interesting posts and links to their likeminded friends.

While research has found that Democratic voters are more likely to read political blogs on a regular basis than their Republican counterparts, blogging has still become a bi-partisan activity — as both liberal and conservative writers cover the blogging landscape with their politically charged missives both for and against those on both sides of the political aisle.

In today’s political sphere, readers can just as easily get behind the opinions of political bloggers as they can their favorite opinion columnist or TV reporter. Political blogs have served as a way to democratize the process of news reporting by allowing anyone to share their views on the world as they see it, and it’s doubtful that this is a trend that will be disappearing anytime soon.

Article Resources:

The State of Blogging
Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
Tech Crunchies

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Related: Free Speech, Media/Blogsphere, Public Opinion, Society, Technology

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