Sunday, February 24, 2008
PEOPLE WONDER
Academic superkids Jason, Axel and Barry deal with right-wing criticism:
A few lazy ad hominem attacks, cut and paste some ready-made phrases about ‘left-wing academics’, and voila, we have another blog post to, er, maintain the rage amongst the faithful. Whoopee. And people wonder why the conservative side of Australian politics is intellectually bankrupt?
Jason, Axel and Barry - presumably busy doing research and stuff - didn’t get around to answering some questions implied in my lazy, rage-maintaining post. Being intellectuals, and therefore open to debate, they won’t mind that those questions are submitted again:
Dear Jason, Axel and Barry,
You claim to have pointed out that “Australia’s bloggers are overwhelmingly left-of-centre”. Yet the linked piece identified no such thing, and in fact appeared not to be concerned at all with the political allegiences of Australian bloggers. Could you please indicate a specific section of that piece supporting your claim?
You claim that Australia is home to “equivalents to the left-leaning Daily Kos”. Could you please name these sites? (Note: Daily Kos attracts around one million hits per day. Proportionally, an Australian blog would be pulling in around 60,000 daily hits to be of similar local impact.)
Jason theorised that “the left-of-centre blogosphere has prospered in Australia” because “opinion pages only seem to be open to forthright conservatives”. Would Jason classify Catherine Deveny, Richard Ackland, Traceeee Hutchison, Mike Carlton, Kathy McCabe, Phillip Adams, Sue Dunleavy, Richard Glover, Jill Singer, Alan Ramsey, Kenneth Davidson, Anne Summers, Peter Hartcher, Annabel Crabb, Michael Leunig, Michelle Grattan, Tim Colebatch, Martin Flanagan and Adele Horin as “forthright conservatives”?
You claim that “Tom Switzer’s resignation as the editor of the Oz’s opinion pages” is a “clear sign” that “hard-right columnists [are] looking increasingly isolated”. How did you reach that conclusion?
Yours,
Tim
UPDATE. About Axel Bruns:
Bruns has coined the term produsage to better describe the currently paradigm shift towards user-led forms of content production which are proving to have an increasing impact on media, economy, law, social practices, and democracy itself.
And the English language, evidently.
In 2007, Bruns was a visiting scholar at the University of Leeds and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he further investigated the impact of produsage on democracy, citizenship, and the media.
Please reveal in comments how produsage has impacted on your own lives; try to keep entries below 1000 words.
UPDATE II. Alex tries to answer one question:
In case any of the Blairites are indeed interested in evidence for our claim that the left of the Australian blogosphere is better developed than the right, here’s a study I conducted about a year ago.
And a fine, rollicking read it is, too, if you’re into Technorati cluster-chat. No updates yet on their linking to a piece that provided none of the evidence claimed, local Kos equivalents, the conservative bias of opinion pages, or that “clear sign” of hard-right isolation. Given Alex’s alarm at being visited by “Blairites” - ie, blog readers - isn’t he looking a little isolated?
UPDATE III. “Why stop at produsage?” asks Rich Stadnik:
Bruns coitermed produsage to betscribe the curredigm shiftards usorms of contduction which areving to have an incpact on medeconolaw, soctices, and democracy itself.
That’s some quality Brunschunking there.
UPDATE IV. Huzzah! Jason favours us with a lengthy piece, answering questions and (mostly) clarifying matters. Some minor points in reply:
• Daily Kos is massively popular. It is influential within the Democratic Party, organises conferences, promotes candidates, makes a lot of money and gets a ton of press. Larvatus Prodeo is read by a couple of thousand local lefties and does nothing.
• Alexa is not a serious means of establishing readership; for a start, it is weighed towards US readers. For more accurate data, check my site stats. They’re public. Scroll down.
• Rather than speculate about why someone at The Australian resigned, why not phone them and ask? Works for me.
UPDATE V. Ken Parish makes a good point amidst many good points:
They apparently see commenters at right-leaning blogs as just a rabble of “the faithful” while the left’s audience is a “community”.