“Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics?”

1. Why do the Democratic leaders embrace blogging as a potential political communication considering the traditional media landscape in politics?

The progression of Netroots usage since 2004 has caused the Democratic Party to enable more usage of social media, email, message boards, RSS feeds and blogs to promote the political party. Netroots used for the Democratic Party have also made it easier for Politicians to tackle issues quicker, cheaper, and interactive with voters and becoming more involved in their daily life which is impossible to do with simply promoting using television or newspapers.

2. Blogging encourages a participatory culture. In what way does the participatory culture in blogging expand digital media convergence?

Because a large segment of the American public turned to the Internet to speak for themselves, we turn to blogging about social issues that affect us as a whole, more people from across the globe on other sides of the world can gain support in your favor. When it comes to digital media convergence, blogging about an issue like a local gang in the city terrorizing pedestrians can make headlines in the newspaper and create support groups to prevent them on social media like Facebook.

3. In the article, the author says: “The ability of the Internet to erase geographical distances can become a structural weakness in elections where district lines and eligibility are key.” How can blogging counter this weakness in the process of turning the net roots to grassroots?

Though we can blog about issues that affect us and larger issues which will gain a following, in order to become grassroot, we must call to action otherwise a voice still remains as just a voice.  A quote from the article by Pew scholar Michael Cornfield sums up the meaning of grassroot when he states that, “raising money at a nationwide level for a special election is one thing, but raising it and developing a core of activists and all the ready-to-respond messages when you have to run hundreds of races simultaneously–which is what will happen in 2006–is another thing.”

4. The author spends the second half of the article discussing the lack of diversity in current blogosphere dominated by elite bloggers. Please use the concept of digital convergence to explain how blogs can become the real bearer of freedom, democracy, egalitarianism, and participation in the new media communication?

In my personal opinion after reading the article, the best way to tackle these issues on a new media convergence level is by creating organizations, pages on social media, and posting awareness for the issues along with hosting events. Thinking that every “like” on your page acts as a new customer and we have to sell our idea like a vender in order to get the consumer to buy our product. Communication is also key because we should all be able to discuss issues and agree based on a diplomatic solution as a democracy.