In the previous issue of The Sofia Echo, we had the chance to see what role the internet played in Bulgarian elections and who this country’s politicians  were that, to a certain extent, benefited from transferring their pre-election campaigns to the web. This leads us to the matter of the primary tools used in today’s political campaigns on the net.

While the means the web provides are at least a dozen – and they are blessed by their interactive nature – its is most certain that the so-called “blogs” are the number one tool to make its way into the future of not only political, but all relations in society.

Short for weblog, the blog in its true form is a regularly updated online journal that allows users to stay in touch with each other. For a political campaign, a blog can be a forum, a mouthpiece and a powerful fund-raising vehicle all in one.

Relatively unknown until recently, the term has rapidly ascended its ranking in the language, thanks in large part to the political campaigns in the US. The recent political developments, however, show that blogs have become widespread in Europe, too, especially when it comes to matters related to the future of the European Union.

The most important feature of the internet blogs is that they are providing a new and unregulated medium for politically motivated attacks, making them very attractive to both voters and politicians.

Blogs usually cover an online group that can be targeted through internet technologies, including e-mail, message boards, and, of course, blogs, which serve as organising hubs. In turn, these blogs employ a range of features, like discussion boards, online donations, live chat, social networking tools, internet voting. All these features allow ordinary citizens to participate in politics, be it supporting a candidate or a party, or organising around a policy issue.

Compared to traditional media, blogs are faster, cheaper and, most importantly, interactive, enabling a level of voter involvement impossible with traditional media like television or newspapers.

Of course blogs have not yet proven their complete efficiency in political campaigns, as no candidate backed by the most popular progressive blogs has yet won an election anywhere in our world. But blogs have proven to be an effective organising tool to conduct politics as usual, cementing the influence of a selected group of bloggers.

Winning an election does not, however, guarantee a radical change in the relations of power. Technology is only as revolutionary as the people who use it, and the progressive blogosphere has thus far remained the realm of the privileged – a weakness that may well prove fatal in the long run.

How did blogs become so popular? Some blame it to the alienation of today’s global world and the role the internet plays in this alienation. Well, it may not have been the mother of blogging technology, but it most certainly gave birth to the political blogosphere.

The cause for the rapid spread of political blogs and their constantly increasing audience (although this may not be a proper term due to their interactive nature) was a deep disillusionment across the political spectrum with traditional media – a disillusionment accentuated by a polarised political landscape.

As blogs have grown in popularity – at the rate of more than one new blog per second – they have begun to lose their front-line role. The very institutions that political bloggers often criticise have begun to adopt the platform, with corporate executives, media personalities, lawyers and PR strategists all using blogs.

In an article entitle Can Blogs Revolutionise Progressive Politics?, published in the US political magazine In These Times, author Lakshmi Chaudhry says that blogs are standard-bearers of a core set of democratic values: participation, egalitarianism and transparency.

“The word ‘blog’ still implies a certain level of citizen involvement, of giving power to someone who is not empowered – especially to progressives who have overtaken conservatives as the heavyweights of the political blogosphere,” Chaundry says.
Political blogs have often been most effective as populist fact-checkers, challenging, refuting and correcting perceived errors in news coverage.

Here is the place to say that such “corrections” can be found in the web forums of most Bulgarian newspapers. They have only revealed the truth that regardless of how impartial any media is, it can never serve to its audience all the dozens of different angles from which certain information can be seen.

This is proof that independent bloggers on the net have challenged the mainstream media and held them accountable. The most significant effect of this provision of different angles has not been merely to put journalists on notice, but to change the way public knowledge is produced on a daily basis.

Blogs are the most proper expression of vox populi in its purest form, unhindered by the usual fears of people who hide behind usernames or fake identities. Or they are at least the voice of the people who post entries and comments, and, to a lesser extent, of their devoted readers.

Telling bloggers that they are wrong or to shut up is somewhat like telling respondents to an opinion survey to simply change their mind.

The irony is that bloggers are most powerful when they work in tandem with the very media establishments they despise. Bloggers alone cannot create conventional wisdom, cannot make a story break and cannot directly reach the vast population that is not directly activist and involved in politics, or just does not have access to the internet.

Blogs instead exert an indirect form of power, amplifying and channelling the pressure of mass opinion upwards to pressure politicians and journalists.

It could be coincidence that the blogosphere emerged around the same time trust in the media was falling and political battles were intensifying. Or perhaps those factors helped shape the blogosphere.

In any case, blogs have proven an extremely effective vehicle for mobilising individuals to influence journalism, public discourse and policy.

Bloggers do not need the blessing of the establishment in order to flourish; they will continue to check, correct and challenge the reporting of any media – from the largest to the smallest.