Canada: Weblogs make difference in campaigns.

saskatoon star phoenix ^ | 01/06/06 | John Gormley

[Pikamax]

With the Christmas political hiatus over, Canada's politicians have ramped up their election campaigns for the final push toward Jan. 23.

And in this election, with the ebb and flow of promises, optics and positioning, one communications tool already making a big difference is the Internet weblog or "blog" as it's called.

A blog is a personal website where the author posts journal entries, commentaries and thoughts, usually daily or in some chronological sequence.

Some people use their blogs as diaries, although why you'd wax on about "what I did today" for more than two billion people on the Net to read, is beyond me.

Consequently, it comes as no surprise that bad things can happen when bloggers name people they've shagged, write revealing things about their friends, families and day jobs, disparage customers and colleagues or chat about business practices of their employers.

Oddly, bloggers who do these things seem shocked when they're fired from their jobs, sued or threatened by nut jobs and stalkers.

Or in the case of Ontario Liberal campaign strategist Mike Klander, how naive, vain or simply dumb do you have to be to think that making sexist and racist comments about NDP Leader Jack Layton's wife would be just a private diary entry?

Blogs can be about anything. And, with millions of them now in existence, there is something for every taste, from communism to cooking.

And, like any good form of entertainment, the best blogs stand for something, take a perspective and make a statement. Being enlightening, witty and clever helps, too.

For good old-fashioned entertainment during an election there is nothing quite like the political blogosphere.

From the wackiest edges of the left and right, and every political shade in between, it's difficult to estimate the number of Canadian political blogs in existence. But when you Google the three words blogs, politics and Canada, more than six million entries come up.

Bloggers range from profane idiots to bright and incisive thinkers whose research skills, analysis and intellect leave many in journalism and academia looking pretty frail by comparison.

As a sign that blogs are catching on, every political party has several "official" blogs where party hacks and candidates do chatty daily posts of their impressions of the election campaign, suffused with a good dose of why you should vote for them.

The better bet is the work of serious bloggers whose posts are thought-provoking, intelligent and often devastatingly disarming when going after political hypocrisy, double standards or scandal.

Whether these blogs have any effect on individual voters is uncertain. Who knows whether political blogs are actually read by people genuinely undecided in their politics?

The better bet is that many political blogs are written by and for political junkies. In any event, there are a couple of reasons that blogs have become an unstoppable force in election campaigns.

They are starting to shape the agenda of the traditional media, which increasingly relies on certain blogs for ideas, tips and even research.

This comes despite many in the mainstream media who snottily sniff that blogs are operated by mere citizens with no journalistic training and with biases, axes to grind and agendas to play out.

This is true. But, unlike many of the privileged middle class elitists who populate news organizations, at least bloggers are transparent and honest about their points of view.

Blogs are an important voice in the big and noisy competitive marketplace of ideas.

An increasing number of stories during this election campaign got their start in the blogosphere and then took off when they hit the conventional media airwaves and news pages.

Less than six weeks ago, bloggers first started researching and writing on the volume of stock market trades and the resulting income trust scandal.

Ditto for the continuing and often withering scrutiny over who had notice of Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's income trusts announcement and when certain people were informed.

Blogs also first had the story (and the actual e-mail exchange) of an Ontario Liberal riding president who told an RCMP firearms expert and critic of the Liberals' handgun ban to "take your NRA gun-loving ass back to the U.S. where you belong."

Although these political stories spent days in the blogosphere, they only became "news" in the conventional sense when the traditional media picked them up from blogs and began forcing reaction from a wider public.

The blogosphere is causing another challenge for modern politics. Blogs are difficult to manipulate.

Since the 1970s, every political party and leader has used staff and paid consultants to spin the media in order to get out the party's message in a positive way.

And, sad to say from experience, most of the Canadian media can be spun like a kid's cheap top. Just look at what passed for political journalism in the last three federal election campaigns.

The blogosphere, on the other hand, is too disparate and large to be influenced by party spin doctors who cannot get to thousands of bloggers who spend hours researching, compiling, comparing and linking political news stories.

One of my favourite political blogs is www.smalldeadanimals.com, which is written in Saskatchewan and read every day by thousands of people around North America.

You can find blogs of interest, or even start your own, by going to websites such as www.blogger.com or www.livejournal.com. Google's www.blogsearch.google.com is also helpful if you're looking for blogs by topic.

Try the blogosphere. It's not like you won't have enough to choose from.

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Gormley can be heard Monday to Friday at 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on NewsTalk radio 650 CKOM

[backhoe]

I am appending links, comments, notable quotes, and helpful blog links & entries at the "last" of this posting:

ADSCAM: Click the picture-

The Canadian blogs are leading the way exposing the endless scandals and keeping attention on them. Be sure to check them out.

[concrete is my business]

I like the writing on some Canadian blogs.

IMO smalldeadanimals and dustmybroom are usually worth a look.

Kate at smalldeadanimals even got offered a seat at the CBC election round table and IMO is kicking butt there.

Go Kate!

Hope your many friends are watching yer back.

Canadian politics are rough and this is an important election.