A couple of months ago I briefly discussed the question of whether Irish bloggers were likely to put down netroots any time soon. In advance of next week's Blogging the Election conference I'd like to make a few further observations. A very good article has just appeared in the Boston Review written by Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber that looks at the netroots movement in terms of their potential for transforming American politics in general and the Democratic Party in particular. Farrell claims that in broad terms the netroots show how the Internet can foster new ways of conducting argument and building social cooperation among diverse individuals and groups and can be considered "the harbinger of structural changes in the relationship between technology and politics".
It is useful to summarise some of these points in order to look at the potential for transforming Irish politics. Drawing on the recent work of Yochai Benkler, Farrell argues that the cheap and easy availability of information technology leads to the creation of a "networked public sphere". This permits the possibility that grass roots activists can compete with professional politicians and pundits in contributing to setting the political agenda and the framing of particular issues. Farrell is both hopeful and realistic about the potential of blogs; they are decentralised, dialogic and have a comparative advantage in debating broad political messages and ideas. Blogs can at the very least influence traditional channels of political commentary and have the potential of displacing them.
The Irish politics blogosphere is much more lively and interesting than more conventional sources of political opinion and there is certainly a greater diversity of viewpoints. But at this point in its development it would be untrue to claim that it has fundamentally changed the nature of political debate. Irish bloggers may be more robust and informal in expression compared with the paid pundits and politicians but so far it's still all talk. In many ways the blogosphere is really only cyber pub talk. Political argument has yet to be harnessed to concerted political action. There are no netroots engaged in political action. Blogs may be a potentially great tool but so far nobody is using them to any great effect.
In the US the netroots are part of a political project that wants to reinvigorate the Democratic Party. There's no equivalent of that over here. I'd be very happy with an initiative that involved people in and around the Labour Party discussing how to revitalise the politics and ideology of the mainstream of Irish socialism. This means more than individual politicians publishing blog-like sites on the Internet that are simply cyber brochures, repositories for their speeches and press statements and a little local colour and hoopla thrown in for good measure.
Comments