100 posts later...

As my last post was the hundredth and also because I am blogging for a little over six months, I thought it was a good reason to consider the issue of blogging generally and blogging about Irish politics.  I should start by apologising to the person who was researching an article and emailed me looking for my views, to which I never replied in detail.  His central question was about whether politicians in Ireland pay any attention to political blogging?  My answer to that is that there's no evidence that they do.  The reason is that Irish politics blog sites are all about opinion and, given the nature of the blogosphere, there is no distinctive contribution from bloggers in terms of setting the agenda for issues to be discussed in the wider public sphere and the mainstream media.  The political opinions of bloggers seem to be diverse enough - certainly there is no coherent or consistent line emanating from them (us?), nor should there be.

Is it ever likely that the mainstream media and political elites will pay attention to the Irish politics blogosphere?  My guess is unless bloggers force some issue or event clearly into the mainstream but over which they can claim to have originated, it's likely that bloggers will remain more or less talking among themselves.  In the US the Trent Lott affair had a significant effect in publicising the efforts of certain prominent American bloggers (see also here).  But prior to that US bloggers were making some headway, especially because some journalists used blogs to supplement what they got paid to do.  This does not happen in the Republic.  It's a question of resources.  I would like to spend many more hours in the day reading, researching and writing but I have a full time job and young children.  There are times when I'd like to stray beyond my self-imposed limits of just dealing with Irish politics.

For the moment I'll stick, more or less, with Irish politics - which brings me nicely around to why I blog in the first place.  I have scholarly interests and I'm reasonably well read in the literature of political science as well as a smattering of other related disciplines in the social sciences.  I'm not a tenured academic so blogging's an outlet.  I'm also politically committed to a perspective that's firmly rooted in the European left and finds expression, in a rather etiolated way, in the Irish Labour Party.  One of my aims was to write about Irish politics in a way that was at least some bit informed by insights derived from political science but to avoid an abstract, arid and overly-academic approach.  On the other hand there's quite enough of the breathless, 'horse race' analysis of mainstream media punditry.  For the next hundred posts I'll try and beef up the intellectual content.  Perhaps I'll be a little less reactive to what's in the news.  On the other hand bloggers depend on the online content of conventional media sources for something to comment on and link to, so there'll always be that.  Feel free to offer suggestions and observations.

Note: Take a look at "The Power and Politics of Blogs", a paper presented to the 2004 American Political Science Association by Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell.  Henry is a contributor to Crooked Timber and Dan blogs at Daniel W. Drezner. 

Comments

[pampooties]

I know how you feel with regard to wishing you could invest more time in the scope of your blog. One of the problems in the Irish blogosphere (hate the term) at the moment, as I see it, is that in order to maintain a site with prime content which will accrue a decent number of hits and feedback one has to employed in the arts/media like those at Siglamag.ie (who I admire and envy), or a student like those at http://realitycheckdotie.blogspot.com/.

I would consider myself well read in terms of Irish Literature and History yet one of the issues I face is the absolute frustration with what I have done for a career Vs the degree I have(ie where my interests lie). I am hoping that blogging will provide an outlet for me and much needed practice in skills which I have lost due to longterm exposure to Irish corporate idiocy. I am new to this blogging and hope to achieve 100 posts.
I enjoyed yours!

[RW]

Gerry,

As a regular reader, congratulations on your first century of posts.

Wishing you well in the future and happy blogging.

Richard

[Kevin]

Well done, Gerry. It's been interesting to see your blog gradually appear on more and more blog's sidebar. It's nice to see that someone who doesn't engage in the banter that is the comment boxes of many Irish blogs has been able to gain such respect solely through your posts' quality. Keep up the good work.

[simon]

Congrats This blogs is near the always top of my list of blogs to drop by and read.
and hopefully I will be able to read it when it comes around to your 1000th post.