Buzzworthy

An interesting recent study produced as part of the Pew Internet and American Life Project attempts to quantify the effects that political blogs and political blogging have had on the wider landscape of politics and the mainstream media. The report focuses its inquiry on a short "A-list" of political bloggers who are seen as making an impact on public discourse.

Of course the major event that seems to have brought blogs into the national political consciousness is the so-called "Rathergate", or the controversy that surrounded allegedly forged memos presented by Dan Rather in a CBS news report on Bush's national guard service. The Pew report goes into absorbing detail about how A-list blogs created buzz around those memos and amplified questions about their authenticity.

Is the blogosphere a new fifth estate, on a level with mainstream media's forth? Not yet, according to this study. However, the study's authors do assert in their conclusions that:

the national discourse could benefit from a sector favoring transparency over opacity, conversation over presentation, small pieces over big works, flexibility over anchorage, incompleteness over conclusiveness, documentation over description, and, paradoxically, individuality over institutionalization.

So, the blogosphere (as represented by a few A-listers) comes off well, all things considered. But the biggest winners in a world that values vigorous political, social and community-building discourse online could be average citizens in cities like ours -- as our local governments use technology to find creative ways to include us in the policy-making process (webcasts of city council meetings, anyone?).

In an age where transparency begins to trump the traditional opacity of our governmental networks, and where we can see how and where our political sausages are made, we just may end up getting better, more palatable, more satisfying sausages.