My Insularity

Eszter Hargatti at Crooked Timber has a post about her study on "Cross-Ideological Conversations Among Bloggers." She is trying to test Cass Sunstein's theory, in Republic.com, that internet politics forms isolated communities of shared ideology, rather than broad conversations among people with different viewpoints.

It's a fascinating study, and she shows that there is a high-degree of cross-ideological conversation among the 41 political blogs she studies, although much of it involves invoking the other side for purposes of "straw-man" arguments.

Of course, being a Washingtonian, I have to now believe that the most important part of any book is the index, especially the part that begins with the first letter of my own last name, so I checked to see whether the Decembrist was included, not expecting it to be.* So I was pleasantly surprised to see that I'd made the cut. (I've always had a natural, reciprocated affinity for the Crooked Timber gang.)

But take a closer look at one of her main charts. This is a way of depicting all the links across political blogs during a week in March, conservative blogs in red, liberal blogs in blue. Those closer to the center have more links -- "conversations" -- across ideology.

OK, see that red guy over at the far left? Matching up the numbers to her chart, that's Blogs for Bush (who now, courtesy of me, have at least one link from a liberal site.) On a quick read, the closest thing to a cross-ideological conversation there is between the people who want to boil George Voinovich in oil, and those who think the boil-in-oilers are wimps who don't understand that we're in a war against the Islamo-fascists and their allies in the Nevada Democratic Party.

Now see that lonely little blue guy on the upper right? That's me. Apparently as insular on the left as "Blogs for Bush" is on the right?

I hope not. I'm guessing this was just one of those weeks, where I didn't post much or if I did, it didn't happen to have many links to other blogs. In the chart, I see only inbound links.

It's still an interesting study, and outliers are just that, outliers. I'll try better not to be one!

*In New York, the most important part of a book is the acknowledgments.