Some thoughts on the recent “blogroll amnesty” where some “A List” bloggers thinned and or added to their blogrolls over at If I Ran the Zoo. (c/o Skippy)
What’s at stake here is the egalitarian and democratic nature of the blogosphere. If traffic and linkage are concentrated among a relatively few extremely popular blogs, then the vast majority are effectively shut out of the conversation. It is a basic liberal belief that great success carries with it the duty to extend opportunity to others; that’s the duty that, as some see it, Atrios and others fail to live up to. As Jon Swift observes, the right blogosphere is actually much more liberal about linking to smaller blogs than the liberal side.
This is a problem I’ve experienced at Jakeneck and the SNAFU Principle. A few top tier bloggers have linked to individual posts here (Avedon Carol of The Sideshow being the most generous and consistent for which I am thankful) and I’ve gotten some nice nods from Jon Swift, My Left Wing, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, and Jewschool, mostly for my longer more “intellectual” posts. (If I’ve left anyone out, sorryboutdat.)
What I’ve observed is that the lack of liberal linkage creates our own echo chamber that concentrates only upon the dominant bloggers. While it is a great resource, it can be pretty repetitive and redundant. And, some great information and great humor, comes from the rest of the blogsphere. Yes, it’s about being more democratic, but it’s really about the flow of information and its ability to convey the truth. We live in an era of disinformation. And, our ability to fight that disinformation is severely hindered by excluding large numbers of smart people who can assist in the task of truth seeking and news gathering.
As brother Douglas has pointed out, the mediaspace is threatened by the lack of human intervention, meaning that the role of humans becomes less important as the technology and the mediaspace itself becomes the point. Blogging is a function that offsets the corporatation of the mediaspace. But, it doesn’t do the job nearly as well as it could and should if only a small fraction of voices dominate the discussion.
While it’s not overt censorship, it’s a form of it. A result of the natural order of human social groups. It reminds me of high school in many ways. Cliques grouping together and excluding others not because they don’t share anything in common, but simply because they can.
It would serve our cause better to spread the wealth as it were, to increase our ability to find, amplify and share the truth.
