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Cavala: for Better or Worse, the Blog World’s “Public” is not the Voting Public

towashington 089.gif By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

As someone who uses the “blog” world regularly, let me be the first to throw stones at it and especially at its use in the world of political analysis.

Internet communication creates the illusion that there is an unseen audience consuming the information and opinions presented there. The success of some sites and of the Obama campaign in fundraising gives impetus to this notion. I would suppose this is the feeling that long-time editorial writers for print outlets and letters-to-the-editor writers have a conviction that they are involved in ‘shaping’ public opinion.

Some blogs do indeed attract a following. “Commentaries” on expressed opinions can run into dozens, and that creates the illusion of a large audience. If your blog attracts attention nationally, the audience can run into the thousands (nationally).

But it is still a drop in the bucket.

The best example I’ve seen recently was the aborted campaign for Congress by Professor Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a Stanford law professor who achieved some notoriety among internet fanciers for his libertarian challenge to copyright laws. He is influential among the many thousand net users who follow his entertaining blog.

This Spring Lessig tried to activate that network in support of his campaign for the Democratic nomination for Congress in CD 12 – a Silicon Valley based district. He raised some money over the internet and commissioned a public opinion survey to see how wide his audience was among actual voters in a specific place.

Lessig discovered that it was neither wide enough nor deep enough for him to be a serious competitor against the phenomenon that was (now) Congresswoman Jackie Speier – and he retired from the field.

This vignette simply underscores one of the great truisms about American Politics. Most people – even most of the likely voters – don’t spend much time thinking about politics, government, elections or political campaigns (possibly excepting the actions of Presidents and for three months every four years, Presidential candidates).

For those of us who are very much in the political world, it is difficult to understand how different we are from ‘normal’ people. I tell candidates that every single person they meet, excepting those they seek out personally in their homes, is abnormal.
Different. Odd. Their attitudes and opinions about politics are “informed” and salient.

In stable small towns, these abnormal people can still be correctly labeled ‘opinion leaders’, and the old academic studies of public opinion may still be relevant: opinion molded by a “two step flow”, from opinion leaders down to followers. In today’s amorphous large cities and suburbs that chain does not exist. Opinion leaders now talk to and debate each other while the vast majority of people pay attention only sporadically, catching vague glimpses of the arguments.

In the blog world, the result is an elite structure engaging in discourse which is disconnected from the general populace while it claims to provide its voice. This wouldn’t matter except for the influence that world has on those who have the responsibility of providing news to the general public.

The days when a newspaper reporter could look into a mirror and see the “public” in the reflection are long gone. Journalists today are self consciously part of the elite structure and those they talk with (“sources”) are as well. An occasional public opinion survey will obtrusively bring public attitudes into play, but stories interpreting those attitudes will be shaped by the abnormal world of sources.

Bill Cavala was Deputy Director of the Assembly Speaker’s Office of Member Services where he worked for over 30 years.

He attended undergraduate and graduate school in the 1960’s and received a doctorate in political science at UC Berkeley. He taught political science at UC Berkeley during the 1970's while he worked part-time for the State Assembly.

Cavala left teaching at UC Berkeley and went to work for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in 1981 until his tenure as Speaker ended in 1995, and he has worked for his five successors as Speaker up to and including Speaker Fabian Nunez.

Mr. Cavala manages election campaigns for Democratic candidates.

Posted on June 08, 2008

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