The Herald on Sunday today features a blog post from Norightturn which asks "Do political blogs make a difference?"
Idiot/Savant who writes NRT says that answer. according to academics studying the 2005 election was "not really".
We look forward to reading the political analysis done on 2008. We suspect that the answer might be different. Political blogs still don't have mass appeal in New Zealand - Kiwiblog being perhaps the exception - but readership is growing, and the quality of that readership is improving greatly. The impact of the blogs is mostly on those who impact wider public opinion rather than directly influencing the average voter. And in that regard there are few politicians, journalists, business leaders, lobbyists, communications managers etc who are not reading and monitoring the blogs on a regular basis. Some people are even leaving it to the blogs to filter their news for them while the media monitoring services are summarising the most read blogs for their clients. In turn those involved in communications are now beginning to use the blogs as they would the wider media to try and influence opinion one way or another.
