Like Mr. Hopkins, I’ve wondered about the value of blogging outside the sphere. That perhaps the time spent typing into text boxes might be better spent in meatspace doing something (mind you, to the extent that any free time could be spent ‘in the field’ I suppose even bothering to read a blog might be somehow wasteful).

From surveys I’ve seen, I think it’s clear that most people don’t read or participate in the blogosphere anyway. MSM still holds sway and blogs are the response to their call.

That said, for outsiders there is a cheap PR value to blogs in so far as they reveal what is being said over backyard fences, barbershops and dinner tables. In the blogosphere you tend to get more honest (if flamacious) discussion. It is always useful to frame your arguments around what people are actually saying/thinking rather than what you imagine. So the real “power“ of blogs is in how they are used in some larger real-world context, not so much in and of themselves. Uh, right?

If there are real-world community groups out there that want to put up a blog to disseminate ideas and information, share the events in their communities, that is definitely useful. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to try to pull more people away from MSM and into the blogosphere more often. Nibble on that red pill, yo.

Individuals? Mirrors in a microscope.

I strongly disagree with the finding on discrimination, from my own experience. Plus, have had several bloggers express a degree of discrimination toward them
based simply on the assumption they are African-Americans or writing about topics about African-Americans.

I found it interesting that two of the bloggers cobb and prometheus 6 participated in the survey. Which suggest to me that the blackosphere is really small or they have a wide reaching audience.

Blogging can bring some folks together. Cool.

But I think it important to focus specifically on self-identified black political bloggers because of the claims made about them, because of the claims they make, and because of the activities they are involved in.

There are literally HUNDREDS of black bloggers who don’t f*ck with politics at ALL, or maybe just a bit. Hiphop bloggers number in the thousands. THe problem to the extent that there is one isn’t that we only choose to do one or two things. We are doing any and everything our non-black peers are doing.

The problem comes when we try to take what we are doing here as a proxy for what is going on outside of these confines.

I think the best thing about black blogs is that this electronic medium gives us a much-needed avenue to reach out and connect in some very good and productive ways. It’s good just to speak out and be heard by one another.

I really don’t think the objective here should be for us to plan the next revolution in an eletronic format, although that’s fine for those who are determined to pursue that. I think the objective should be the sheer power of connection.

As for the fact that so many black bloggers are focusing on race and politics, that’s hardly surprising. And while it’s good for us to weigh in on issues that are so central to all of us, I also would like to see more of us stretch out and delve into other areas too. Let’s not all chip away at the same rock, you know?

Peace.

i am not sure how you’d go about answering the first question. the best one could do would probably be to conduct some type of experiment with two comparable groups of folks to see how they allocated their time under conditions in which one group could blog or read blogs and the other could not.

the second question could be done through a kind of social network approach. figure out who is reading who, what blog is connected to what other blogs, and what types of uses those connections are being put to. this would be interesting for someone to tackle.

the last question could be answered through the methods used to answer the question directly above. i wonder if pole has these things in mind…as the person most qualified to tackle them (and the one who has the most incentive to do so incidentally) would be someone in the information sciences…

your feedback is on point (thanks for the compliment by the way). craig nulan is someone else who routinely participates in blogging conversations but is actively involved in the politics of kansas city. you’d be hard pressed to find someone involved in these types of politics among black bloggers.

I think I know every Black leader of consequence in my town. I help their Black-focused organizations and they help the Black-focused organizations I support or lead. Together we influence opportunities, schools, businesses, votes, policies, and movement of capital. Collectively we lead or support most of the Black-focused rubber-meets-road work.

Based on conversations I’ve had with our Black leaders (most of them are much older than I am), I’d wager I’m the only one who reads a few Black-focused blogs regularly and shares my ideas via these blogs occasionally. I’m probably the only one who has enough leisure time (until I begin law school this Fall) to spend four to six hours per week with blogs. Most of the others don’t have the time. They have jobs or other obligations that eat up forty to sixty of their labor hours each week. Additionally, our community stretches our capable and influential Black leaders as thin as it can. On the rare occasion that a blog introduces me to an idea or a resource that would help our real-world Black-focused efforts here, I get that information to our leaders quickly. But this happens very, very rarely.

I only visit three blogs regularly: yours, Cobb’s, and Blackprof. 90% of the time I visit for entertainment and news I don’t get via my satellite service. 10% of the time I engage others in fruitful conversations. I rarely engage the original posters at Blackprof. I often get to engage you and Cobb when I join one of your conversations. Since I began to blog in October 2005, I have participated in at most ten blog conversations during which other grassroots leaders and I actually exchanged valuable and concrete information about real-world tactics and logistics. Overall, Black-focused blogs have done very little for the Black-focused community work I support or lead.

Those of us who support or lead Black-focused community work here do stuff like educate, train, and consult for Black business owners; provide free legal and accounting services to some Black-owned businesses; plan and support Black-focused social events; recruit Black students, faculty, and staff to our university; get Black students scholarship money; use our social capital to help Black students get into selective graduate and professional programs; give Black student organizations money for their social events; find money for Black scholars and artists to visit us and give presentations or speeches; get Blacks jobs with our major employers; get our politicians out to our events and discussion groups; advise the leaders of our most powerful private and public institutions (often as board members); raise money for our Black-focused organizations; have health fairs where our Black doctors provide free examinations to Black folks who can’t afford them; sign up Black voters; hold town-hall meetings to share community information and educate our voters; etc.

I don’t think much of the content I find on Black-focused blogs would help us do this stuff better than other easily accessible resources. I got a copy of The Covenant with Black America to a dozen of the Black leaders in my town. I plan to get a copy of The Covenant in Action to two dozen. I even purchased and passed around a few copies of Spencer Overton’s Stealing Democracy. I suspect these books would do more for our grassroots community building and political organization than all the Black-focused blog content I’ve read.

Blog content is often authored by non-specialists who get a lot wrong, or specialists who stray too far away from their areas of expertise. And, experts don’t engage us in blog threads as often as I’d like them to. In fact, I’ve noticed that participation from professional scholars and specialists has dropped substantially on Blackprof during the last twelve months. It seems to me as the site grows more popular and attracts more generalists and laymen, fewer Black scholars mix it up with us in the blog threads. I have a theory about why this is happening (if indeed it is happening). So, folks like me, who were mainly looking for novel ideas from specialists, ideas we might not find by reading the best five books published for popular Black public intellectuals each year, are really not getting what we hoped Black-focused blogs give us. Most blogs focus on familiar political and cultural criticisms and some of the playful stuff that I could get by hanging out with my teenage son and daughter or my mentees. Your blog has educated me more than the other two I visit regularly. I visit Cobb because even though I disagree with most of his political views, I enjoy reading some of his political arguments. I also find much of his non-political stuff entertaining and informative. I visit Blackprof mostly for its commentators—several of whom I’ve hooked up with via LinkedIn.com or email or telephone. Off-blog some of us have talked about real-world action in our communities and traded some valuable information.

A few questions I would like social scientists to investigate:

Are popular Black-focused blogs draining many thousands of hours of potential Black-focused community volunteerism or are their bloggers just trading hours they would have spent watching television for hours blogging?

Could trained sociometricians study and measure the Black social capital gains being generated through Black-focused blogs?

Who is most responsible for the social capital gains Black professionals are making via blogs, the authors or the commentators?

which splits one of the questions above into two. how many people engage in online political activity as opposed to stuff outside of it? what is the distinction between the type of meetups generated by moveon.org and the type of activities individual bloggers get their readers and others to participate in?