Political Blogs and the Bloggers Who Blog Them:Is the Political Blogosphere and Echo Chamber?

by Kevin WallstenDepartment of Political Science

University of California, BerkeleyPaper Presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting

Washington, D.C.September 1-4, 2005

Abstract

Most studies of political blogging have focused exclusively on the so-called “A-list” political blogs. While these studies have provided important insights into the content of A-list political blogs (Adamic and Glance, 2005), how A-list political blogs influence media coverage (Drezner and Farrell, 2004) and who A-list political bloggers are (McKenna and Pole, 2004), they have largely ignored the thousands of less read political blogs that are written by average citizens every day. As a result, relatively little is known about political blogging “by the rest of us” (Schiano et al., 2004). Perhaps most surprising in this regard is the fact that while there has been much debate over whether political blogging is a form of political participation (McKenna and Pole, 2004), there has been no systematic research into how ordinary people are using blogs as a form of political expression. In this paper, I will address this oversight by using a computer assisted, quantitative content analysis of 25 randomly selected, non-A-list political blogs over the six month period from July to November 2004 in order to determine the relationship between mainstream media coverage and political blog discussion. The results of this study will help shed light on whether the political blogosphere is a merely an “echo chamber” for the messages of political elites as reported in the mainstream media.

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Introduction

Although the term “blog” (which refers to a regularly updated personal web site with

posts appearing in reverse chronological order)1 has been around since 1997, political blogging

seems to be a more recent phenomenon. According to most accounts of the history of blogging, 2

politically oriented blogs first emerged after the events of September 11, 2001 – as people turned

to blogs to both express their feelings about the terrorist attacks on America and to locate

information not available in the mainstream media (Scott, 2004). In 2002, many of the bloggers

who were turned on to blogging as a result of September 11th began blogging about the potential

for a war with Iraq. Some of these political bloggers, such as Instapundit, Daily Kos, and

AndrewSullivan.com, began to attract wide readerships as a result of their discussions of

American domestic and foreign policy. In fact, some of these so-called “A-list” blogs (i.e. blogs

that receive a high number of “hits” and incoming links) became so popular that many political

elites and traditional media institutions began to adopt the form themselves. In fact, by 2004

blogging had become so mainstream that all of the major presidential candidates – ranging from

Howard Dean to George Bush – had started their own blogs and both of the major political

parties had granted press credentials to political bloggers to cover their conventions.3 Some

evidence suggests that the mass public has been taken in by all of this high profile blogging.

According to a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project,4 for example, 32

1 There are countless definitions of what a blog is. According to Drezner and Farrell (2004), for example, a blog is “a web page with minimal to no external editing, providing on-line commentary, periodically updated and presented in reverse chronological order, with hyperlinks to other online sources.” According to Mortensen and Walker (2002) blogs are “frequently updated websites, usually personal, with commentary and links.” On her blog, “The Professional-Lurker,” Lois Ann Scheidt defines a blog as, “A weblog is a frequently modified website that allows updating with items that are grouped primarily by the time and/or date of posting. Entries usually appear in reverse chronological order. Contents of the weblog may be available publicly or through restricted access. Weblogs may also utilize special software designed for this implementation.” McKenna and Pole (2004) define blogs as "web pages that are regularly updated, operated by one person or a small group of people and developed for little to no cost. Individual entries or posts are chronologically updated like a diary with the most recent posts viewed first."2 For a good history of weblogs see Blood (2000) and Blood (2003). 3 The credentialed bloggers posted their entries at www.conventionbloggers.com for the Republican National Convention and at www.cyberjournalist.net for the Democratic National Convention. 4 For more details on this study see http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP blogging data.pdf.

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million U.S. citizens now regularly turn to weblogs for information and 9% of Internet users said

they read political blogs “frequently” or “sometimes” during the 2004 presidential campaign.5

This explosion in the popularity of blogging has been accompanied by a surge in the

number of academic studies focusing on blogs. Drezner and Farrell (2004), for example, have

found that journalists are increasingly likely to refer to “A-list” political blogs as part of their

news gathering routines and that these “A-list” blogs receive a disproportionate number of links

from other blogs. In a somewhat different vein, McKenna and Pole (2004) surveyed the authors

of the most “popular” political blogs in order to determine who blogs, how popular bloggers use

their blogs and what impact political blogging has on traditional forms of political participation.6

More recently, Cornfield et al (2005) have attempted to link the content of “A-list” political

blogs to mass media coverage by tracking the discussion of a number of high profile political

issues during one month of the 2004 election campaign and Adamic and Glance (2005) have

analyzed the posts of 40 “A-list” political blogs during the two months prior to the 2004

Presidential election in order to determine which issues and actors were most frequently

discussed. In short, there has been no dearth of studies focusing on political blogs.

While all of these studies about political blogs have provided important insights into the

dynamics and consequences of “A-list” blogs, they have largely ignored the thousands of less

read political blogs that are written by average citizens every day. As a result, relatively little is

known about political blogging “by the rest of us” (Schiano et al., 2004). Perhaps most surprising

in this regard is the fact that while there has been much debate over whether political blogging is

5 There is also indirect evidence that Americans turned to political blogs with increasing frequency during the 2004 Presidential campaign. For instance, the most popular political blogs, such as DailyKos, Wonkette and Instapundit, received dramatic increases in the level of “traffic” in the months leading up to the 2004 Presidential election. See http://techcentralstation.com/011105B.html.6 Popular here refers to how widely read the blogger’s blog is. In order to determine who the popular bloggers were, McKenna and Pole selected the top 125 political weblogs using the rankings from four websites that rank the popularity of blogs: Blogstreet, the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, Technorati’s Top 100 and the Truth Laid Bear. Each of these sites has slightly different ways to measure popularity – ranging from the number of incoming links to the number of unique “hits.” In order to account for these differences, McKenna and Pole decided to include only those weblogs that appeared on at least two of the four top rankings.

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a form of political participation, there has been no systematic research into how ordinary people

are using blogs as a form of political expression. In this paper, I will address this oversight by

using a computer assisted, quantitative content analysis of 25 randomly selected, non-A-list

political blogs over the six month period from July to November 2004 in order to determine the

relationship between mainstream media coverage and political blog discussion during a period of

high political engagement – the presidential election campaign. More specifically, this paper will

test the hypothesis that the political blogosphere is no more than an “echo chamber” for the

messages of the mainstream media.

Political Blogs: Participation or Expression?

With so much political blogging going on, there has been a rush to determine where

political blogging fits into traditional classifications of political activity. In particular, there has

been a great deal of debate over whether political blogging constitutes a new and unique form of

political participation.7 Whether political blogging is, in fact, a form of political participation, of

course, depends primarily on the definition of political participation that one is working with. In

the political science literature, political participation is usually defined as “action directed

explicitly toward influencing the distribution of social goods and social values” (Rosenstone and

Hansen, 1993). Unlike the definitions used by practitioners in other fields, this definition points

to the importance of the individual’s motives in engaging in a particular activity.8 If the

individual is motivated by a desire to influence the distribution of goods and values, then the

activity is participation. Similarly, if they are motivated by some other goal – such as the desire

for self expression – then the activity is not political participation.

In order to know whether political blogging is political participation, therefore, it is first

7 For a good example of this discussion see McKenna and Pole (2004). 8 In their analysis of political blogging, for example, McKenna and Pole (2004) argue that the act of writing and thinking about politics and sharing one’s views with others constitutes political participation. As a result, they claim that blogging needs to be included among other more traditional forms of participation, such as voting, attending rallies and signing petitions.

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necessary to know what the motivations of political bloggers are and how they use their blogs.

Indeed, if bloggers use their blogs to run political advertisements, encourage their readers to sign

on-line petitions or mobilize their readers to vote, then political blogging is probably best

understood as a form of political participation. If, however, bloggers are using their blogs as

nothing more than technological “soapboxes” from which to spout their opinions into the vast

expanse of cyberspace, an alternative definition of political blogging may be required. Of course,

the appropriate way to uncover the motivations of political bloggers and their uses of blogs is

through a combination of survey data and content analysis. In short, the question of whether

political blogging is, in fact, political participation is an empirical question that, unfortunately,

has not yet been adequately addressed in the literature.9

More important for my argument in this paper than whether political blogging is a form

of political participation, however, is the recognition that political blogging is, at its core, an

action designed to allow individuals to express their opinions on political issues. Put differently,

regardless of whether political blogging is a form of political participation, political blogging

may be best defined as a novel form of political expression. The argument to define political

blogs as political expression rather than political participation has more than semantic

consequences. Indeed, defining political blogging as a form of political expression is significant

because it raises a fundamentally different set of questions than defining political blogging as a

form of political participation. If political blogging is defined as political participation, for

example, questions such as “who blogs,” “why do people blog,” and “what impact does blogging

have” take center stage. By contrast, when political blogging is defined as a form of political

expression questions such as “what is the content of the political expression found on political

blogs,” “what impact do political events have on the content of the political expression found on

9 The exception to this, of course, is McKenna and Pole’s study. Unfortunately, their study is limited to A-list bloggers. For a discussion of this question as it relates to ordinary political bloggers see Wallsten (forthcoming).

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political blogs” and “how does the content of the political expression found on political blogs

change over time?” In this paper, I will attempt to answer this latter set of questions by analyzing

the content of the political expression found in ordinary political blogs.

Is the Political Blogosphere an “Echo Chamber?”

For those who have at least a passing familiarity with the political blogosphere, the claim

that political blogs can be understood primarily as forms of political expression is probably

unsurprising. Indeed, as the number of political bloggers has grown and a collective sense of

self-awareness has emerged within the political blogosphere, political bloggers and academics

alike have begun to ask questions about both the content of the political expression found in

political blogs and about the external factors that influence that content. In addition to the

emergence of a number of internet sites devoted exclusively to measuring the content of blogs –

such as Daypop, BlogPulse and BuzzMetrics – a number of recent studies have focused

exclusively on describing the content of the political expression found on political blogs. In a

study by Adamic and Glance (2005), for example, the number of times specific political actors

and news stories were mentioned by political bloggers was counted over the course of a day and

comparisons were made between liberal and conservative bloggers. Similarly, a new Pew study

conducted by Cornfield et al. (2005) attempted to link discussion by A-list political bloggers to

media coverage by tracking the discussion of a number of high profile political issues during one

month of the election season.

One of the most popular topics in this recent wave of concern over the content of political

blogs has been the question of whether the political blogosphere constitutes an “echo chamber.”

What does it mean to call the political blogosphere an echo chamber? The idea that the political

blogosphere is an “echo chamber” is the fairly straightforward notion that the content of political

blogs does little more than “echo” the messages of put forth by political elites in the mainstream

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media. Although few have spelled it out in precisely this way, the idea that the political

blogosphere is an echo chamber is really made up of three separate ideas: (1) that the issues

discussed in political blogs will closely mimic the issues discussed in the mainstream media

(such that more media coverage on an issue leads to more discussion of that issue in the political

blogosphere); (2) that the positions taken by political bloggers on political issues greatly

resemble the positions taken by the blogger’s own party leaders and publicized in the mainstream

media; (3) the frames and justifications employed by political bloggers are the same as the

frames and justifications of the blogger’s party leaders as publicized in the mainstream media. In

short, calling the political blogosphere an echo chamber suggests that the political expression

found on political blogs is closely related to, if not entirely derivative of, the content of

mainstream media coverage.

Although there have been no systematic studies of any of these three dimensions of the

echo chamber hypothesis, there are good theoretical reasons to expect that political blogs should

act as echo chambers for the messages presented in the mainstream media. Starting with the

work of V.O. Key and continuing through present day research, the belief that individual

political attitudes are responsive to elite messages presented by the mass media is widely

accepted by political scientists. Iyengar and Kinder (1984), for example, have found that the

level of importance people attach to an issue is a direct function of the level of media coverage

that issue receives. In a somewhat different vein, Zaller (1992) has argued that the actions and

statements of political elites, as reported in the mass media, exert a strong, if not total, influence

on mass public opinion – with party loyalists adopting not only the policy positions but also the

frames and arguments of their respective party leaders once the appropriate cues are sent out

through the mass media. To the extent that active forms of political expression, such as political

blogging, follow the same dynamics as the passive expressions that generated these studies of

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public opinion (i.e. responding to public opinion surveys), the hypothesis that the political

blogosphere is an echo chamber has a great deal of evidence to support it.

So is the political blogosphere an echo chamber? Although answering this question in its

entirety would require assessing the relationship between blog content and media coverage on

each of the three dimensions discussed above and is, therefore, well beyond the scope of this

paper, I will address one dimension of this question here: what is the relationship between the

amount of coverage an issue receives in the mainstream media and the amount of discussion the

issue receives in the political blogosphere?

The Predictions of the Echo Chamber Hypothesis

According to the echo chamber hypothesis, there should be a strong relationship between

the level of media coverage an issue receives and the amount of discussion on that issue that

takes place in the political blogosphere. To be more precise, the echo chamber hypothesis makes

four predictions. First, more mainstream media coverage of an issue should lead to more posts on

that issue and less media coverage should lead to fewer posts on that issue. In other words, there

should be a positive relationship between the amount of media coverage on an issue and the

number of posts on that issue – meaning both the correlation coefficient (r) and the slope

coefficient of the regression line (b) should be positive. Second, increases and decreases in media

coverage on an issue should have a fairly direct and large impact on the number of posts. Indeed,

according to the echo chamber hypothesis, political bloggers should blog about what they see

when they see it so there should be a fairly strong relationship between the number of stories on

an issue and the number of blog posts mentioning that issue. In other words, in regression

analysis, the slope coefficients (b) for media stories should be closer to 1 than to 0 – meaning

that one story on an issue in the media should produce about one post in a political blog. Third,

the echo chamber hypothesis says that political blogs will not discuss issues that are not covered

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in the media and, furthermore, political blogs will not ignore issues that are discussed in the

media. In other words, there should be a tight relationship between media coverage and blog

discussion – meaning that that the correlation coefficient (r) and, therefore, R² are high. Finally,

the echo chamber hypothesis predicts that political bloggers will rely primarily on mainstream

media sources for their information. As a result, the primary source of external links should be to

the mainstream media and the number of mainstream media links should remain fairly constant

over time (because the influence of media does not change). To summarize the predictions of

the echo chamber hypothesis:

P1: The correlation coefficient (r) and the slope coefficient (b) between the amount of media coverage on an issue and the number of posts on that issue should be positive.

P2: The slope coefficients (b) for media coverage on an issue should be closer to 1 than to 0.

P3: The correlation coefficient (r) and R² between media coverage and blog posts should be high (i.e. closer to 1 than to 0).

P4: The majority of external links should be to mainstream media sources and the number of links to media sources should remain fairly constant over time.

It is worth mentioning here that the predictions of the echo chamber hypothesis could be

correct at the aggregate level even if political blogs are acting as media watchdogs instead of

echo chambers. Indeed, if a significant number of political bloggers carefully followed media

coverage on a number of high profile issues and frequently criticized the shortcomings of this

coverage, the predictions of the echo chamber hypothesis – a positive relationship between

media coverage and the number of posts, a slope coefficient near 1 and a high R² - would hold.

In this case, however, it would clearly be a mistake to call the political blogosphere an echo

chamber because media messages are being consistently criticized rather than echoed. It is for

this reason that a more detailed content analysis – one that looks not only at the correlation

between the amount of media coverage and the number of blog posts but also at how media

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messages are discussed by political bloggers – is required. Unfortunately, this type of analysis is

also beyond the scope of this paper. As a result, I will not be able to determine in this paper if a

high R² and a positive relationship are evidence in favor of the echo chamber hypothesis or just

evidence of political blogs acting as media watchdogs.10

Why Study Ordinary Political Blogs?

Before analyzing the relationship between mainstream media messages and ordinary

political blog content it is worth saying a few words about why ordinary political blogs should be

studied at all. Although most studies of political blogs are justified on the basis that the blogs

under study influence some important macrolevel outcomes, such as media coverage or

international politics (Drezner and Farrell, 2004), these studies, as suggested above, focus only

on the most widely read and influential political blogs. The ordinary political blogs that form the

subject matter of this paper, however, are, by definition, likely to be hidden in the vast expanse

of the internet and have an audience size that is asymptotically close to zero. If we are to care

about studying ordinary political blogs, therefore, we must find some justification other than

their potential impact on the external world.

In fact, there are a number of good reasons to study ordinary political blogs even if they

pose no threat of influencing the environment in which they operate. In the interest of brevity, I

will mention only one of these reasons here. As suggested above, ordinary citizens are

increasingly using political blogs as a form of political expression and – possibly – a form of

political participation. As such, research into who blogs, what is blogged about and how blogs

interact with the world around them is needed to answer questions such as: “Does political

10 Consistent with this idea, some have labeled the political blogosphere a “fifth estate” – separate from the “political nobility,” “the knowledge clergy,” the citizenry and the press (Cornfield et al., 2005). Although labeling bloggers a “fifth estate” may be a somewhat grandiose label for such a nascent phenomenon, the title is meant to suggest that political bloggers use their blogs to either discuss issues that have not been covered by the mainstream media or to discuss issues that have been covered in what they perceive to be a biased fashion. Political bloggers, for example, take credit for drawing attention to issues that were initially ignored by the mainstream media – such as Trent Lott’s comments at Strom Thurmond’s birthday celebration and the authenticity of the National Guard documents presented by CBS News.

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blogging make people more engaged in and informed about politics?”; “Does political blogging

intensify differences in opinion on political issues or diminish them?”; and, “What kinds of

events motivate ordinary people to make active expressions of opinion on political issues?”

Studies that focus exclusively on A-list political bloggers are unlikely to provide meaningful

answers to these questions because A-list political bloggers are likely to be professional

journalists, political activists or some other kind of unique and exceptional individual (McKenna

and Pole, 2004). Indeed, studying only A-list bloggers is likely to lead us to draw some very

faulty conclusions about the who’s, what’s and why’s of this emerging form of political activity.

As a result, more studies of ordinary political blogs are needed.

Methodology

Sampling Ordinary Political Blogs

One of the most serious obstacles to drawing valid conclusions about the content of

ordinary political blogs stems from the fact that no single population list of political blogs exists

and, as a result, there is no way to generate a truly representative sample of political blogs.11

Indeed, the very idea of a “political blog” is troubling because there is no consensus on what

distinguishes political blogs from non-political blogs.

There have been two main suggestions for how to separate political blogs out from the

more numerous non-political blogs. First, some have suggested that a blog can be defined as

political if the amount of political discussion exceeds some (as of yet unspecified) percentage of

the overall content. Although this method has the virtue of drawing clear lines between political

11 Similarly, there are no population lists for the blogosphere on the whole. If there were, one method for generating a random sample of political blogs would be to use these population lists to generate a random sample of general blogs. Each blog could then be checked for whether it was political or not and either throwing the sampled blog out or including it in the study. This process could be repeated until the desired sample size was reached. This method of generating a sample is excellent from both a practical and methodological perspective not only because it samples from the nearly complete population lists of the above mentioned sites but also, and more importantly, because the researcher does not have to generate these population lists on his or her own. Unfortunately, the two sites that had provided extensive – though not complete – lists of the blogs currently on the internet: www.blo.gs or the NITLE Blog Census (www.blogcensus.net) were no longer working at the time of this paper.

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and non-political blogs, it is also has the drawback of requiring a tremendous amount of effort

simply to determine which blogs should be included in the research. As a result, this method may

be better for determining the overall level of political blogging relative to other types of blogging

than for answering more detailed questions about the specifics of political blogs such as the one

that occupies my attention here.

Second, some have suggested that the best method for determining whether a blog is

political or not is simply to trust the blogger’s own assessment of their blog. There are two

different ways to employ this method: keywords and interviews. The keywords approach to

defining a political blog relies on the fact that many bloggers list their blogs on blog directories

and, more importantly, these blog directories allow bloggers to categorize their blogs using a

number of different keywords. Since these blog directories usually allow for searches based on

these keywords, it can be relatively easy to locate the blogs that are political. By contrast, the

interview method requires contacting bloggers via email and asking them whether they think

their blogs are political. Much like the content approach discussed above, this method would

have the disadvantage of requiring a large sample of bloggers just to find the small number of

blogs that are political. It seems, therefore, that this method would probably be better employed

as an additional check once a blog had been defined as political by one of the other methods

discussed above. Indeed, given that the goal of this paper is to assess the content of political

blogs and not to determine the level of political discussion in the blogosphere on the whole, it

seems that the keyword approach provides the best method for defining a political blog.12

While the keyword method might be the most appropriate way to generate a sample given

my goals in this paper, it is not without its drawbacks. In addition to the fact that this method

requires a great deal of work the part of the researcher to create the population list, it is also

12 This is the approach used by Adamic and Glance (2005). In their article they create a sample of 1000 political blogs by downloading the listings of political blogs from several online weblog directories, including eTalkingHead, BlogCatalog, CampaignLine, and Blogarama.

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unattractive because the directories provide information about an unrepresentative subset of the

blog population on the whole. Indeed, the blog directories used to generate the population lists

include only those blogs that have been submitted for inclusion by the authors of the blogs

themselves and, as a result, cannot produce anything like a true or complete list of political blogs

from which to sample. Furthermore, many bloggers may either intentionally (in order to increase

readership) or unintentionally miscategorize their blogs as political when, in fact, political issues

are rarely or never discussed.

Despite these weaknesses, I relied on twelve of the most well known blog directories

(Blogwise, Blogarama, BlogCatalog, BlogUniverse, BlogSearchEngine, BlogStreet,

CampaignLine, ETalkingHead, GetBlogs, EatonwebPortal, Globe of Blogs and Yahoo’s

directory of blogs) to generate a population list of 10,732 unique political blogs. From this list, I

randomly sampled each political blog, checked if the blog was active during the period of the

study (June to November 2004) and either included in the sample or threw it out.13 In all, 83

political blogs were sampled in order to arrive at the final sample of 25 political blogs. Overall,

these 25 political blogs contained 3,763 unique posts over the period of the study. The final list

of blogs included in this study is listed in Table 1. Although the fact that blog directories include

only those blogs that have been submitted for inclusion by the authors of the blogs themselves

and, as a result, cannot produce anything like a true representative sample of political blogs, this

is the best (if not only) method of generating a sample given the goals of this paper.

Content Analysis

For my analysis of the relationship between media coverage and blog content, I chose to

focus on 25 high profile political issues. These 25 issues were selected not only to capture a

broad array of policy concerns – ranging from domestic politics to international politics – but

also, and more importantly, to represent the key political issues being debated during the period

13 Blogs were also checked to determine if they were American.

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of the study. Although the 25 issues did not capture the total range of issues discussed in political

blogs or in the mainstream media, they did seem to constitute the majority of blog discussion and

media coverage from June to November 2004. A list of these issues and the keywords used to

identify them can be found in the Appendix.

Using the list of issue keywords presented in the Appendix, a “keyword in context”

(KWIC) content analysis program was used to code each of the 3,763 political blog posts in the

sample. Posts were coded for each issue as either having mentioned the issue (i.e. the issue

keyword was used) or not having mentioned the issue (i.e. the issue keyword was not used).

Each mention of an issue keyword was coded for every post and, as a result, many posts are

recorded as mentioning multiple issues. In addition to coding for issues, the number of links to

academic, governmental, mainstream media, partisan media, A-list blogs and liberal and

conservative non-governmental organizations was recorded for each post. Finally, each political

blog was categorized according to the partisanship of its author.14

In order to measure the independent variable for this study – mainstream media coverage

– I used Lexis-Nexis to search the New York Times over the period from June 1, 2004 to

November 30, 2004. I searched the “headlines, lead paragraphs and terms” section of the Lexis-

Nexis archives using all of the issue keywords listed in the Appendix. Every article that

mentioned the keyword in the headline, lead paragraph or terms section was counted for each

day during the period of the study. Editorials and letters to the editor were excluded from the

final counts of the number of stories.

Results

14 In order to code for the partisanship of the blog, three steps were taken. First, the title of the blog was checked for references to partisanship because many political blogs include some reference to their partisanship in their blog title. Only if this was inconclusive were further steps taken to code the blogger’s partisanship. The second step that was taken to determine the partisanship of the blogger was to look for partisan references in the blogger’s description of the blog. The third and final step that was taken was to analyze the content of the blog itself. If a blog made an outright statement about the outcome of the election such as “Please let Bush win,” “Please defeat Bush” or “Vote against Bush,” the blog was coded for the direction of that statement.

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Before turning to a discussion of the relationship between the amount of media coverage

an issue receives and the number of blog posts on that issue, it is worth saying a few words about

the political blogs that are included in my sample. First, the sample included more Democratic

political bloggers than Republican political bloggers. More specifically, my sample included

fourteen Democratic bloggers, eight Republican bloggers, one independent blogger, one

libertarian blogger and one blogger whose partisanship could not be determined. Although it

might appear that, given my sample, Democrats are over represented in the political blogosphere,

a note of caution is in order. As stated above, this paper looked only at political blogs that were

active from June to November of 2004. It is possible that Democratic bloggers were either more

likely to start their political blogs earlier (making them more likely to be active since June 2004)

or that Democratic bloggers were more likely to continue their blogging through the end of

November 2004. Indeed, if Republican political bloggers were relatively late arrivals on the

political blogging scene (meaning they started their blogs after June 1, 2004) or were more likely

to leave the political blogosphere after the election (meaning they stopped blogging sometime

before November 30, 2004), Democrats would be overrepresented in my sample.

In order to determine if Democrats were overrepresented in my final sample, I coded

each of the political blogs that were excluded from my sample for their partisanship. Once non-

English, non-American and non-blogs were eliminated from the excluded set I was left with a

total of 30 American political blogs (not active during the period from June to November 2004)

to code for partisanship.15 In this set of political blogs, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by a

margin of 14 to 10 (with 3 Independents and 3 unknowns). It does appear, therefore, that

15 Overall, therefore, 25 of the 83 blogs sampled were written in English, American and active from June to November 2004 while 30 of the 83 were written in English, American and not active from June to November 2004. The remaining 28 blogs were either not written in English, not American, did not meet the definition of a blog or did not work.

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Democrats are slightly overrepresented in my sample because Democrats appear to have been

more likely to maintain an active political blog during the time period I am studying.

Second, the political blogs contained in my sample varied widely in the overall amount of

activity during the time period I am studying. Indeed, while some made as many as 15 posts to

their blogs every day, others updated their blogs only a few times a month. To be more precise,

the average number of posts per day was 1.1 but the standard deviation in the sample was 1.8. It

appears, therefore, that some bloggers are more committed to and invest more time in their

political blogs than others.

Third, the political blogs in my sample varied widely in their overall level of political

discussion. Some of the political blogs in the final sample were exclusively political and offered

almost no details on the personal life of the blogger while other political blogs in the sample

seem to double as personal blogs – with stories and anecdotes about the blogger’s personal life

filling a large portion of the blog. This variation in the amount of political discussion is the

inevitable product of the fact that blogs allow authors to discuss any topic they want and that the

blog directories from which the political blogs in this paper were sampled impose no restrictions

on what keywords can be used to describe one’s blog. As a result, many bloggers may list their

blog as political even if they never discuss political issues at all.16

So how tight is the relationship between the amount of media coverage an issue receives

and the number of posts on that issue in the political blogosphere? In order to fully answer this

question and, in doing so, determine whether the echo chamber hypothesis is accurate, it is useful

to look at the relationship between media coverage and blog posts in three different ways: in the

overall sample, for Democrats and Republicans and for individual political blogs. Analyzing the

strength of the relationship in the overall population is the perhaps the best test for the echo

16 Future studies may correct for this by using the content approach as a further filter for the blogs sampled from the blog directories.

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chamber hypothesis as I have spelled it out because it primarily makes claims about the political

blogosphere on the whole and not about small subsets of the blogosphere or individual

differences between political bloggers. By looking only at the overall sample, however,

important differences between political partisans and individuals may be missed. More

specifically, the idea that Democrats and Republicans will respond differently to media coverage

on different issues cannot be tested and it will be unclear whether there are some political

bloggers who have assumed the role of echo chamber more than others. In the case of

partisanship, this oversight can be particularly troublesome because, if Democrats and

Republicans are acting as echo chambers for an entirely different set of issues, the overall

correlation between media coverage and these issues will appear small – thereby discounting the

echo chamber hypothesis – even though there is a significant amount of echoing going on. As a

result of these considerations, I will analyze the relationship between issue coverage and blog

posts in the overall sample, in partisan groups and for each individual political blogger.

The findings for the relationship between the amount of media coverage and the number

of blog posts in the overall sample are presented in Table 2. As Table 2 clearly shows, there is no

clear overall relationship between the amount of media coverage of an issue and the number of

political blog posts that mention that issue. Indeed, for some issues there is a significant

relationship between media coverage and blog posts while for others there is no relationship

whatsoever. On the one hand, the relationship between media coverage and blog posts is strong,

positive and statistically significant for 8 of the 25 issues studied: Iraq (r = .25), abortion (r =

.22), prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib (r = .26), Osama bin Laden (r = .22), the military draft (r =

.21), the crisis in the Sudan (r = .21), moral values (r = .44) and stem cell research (r = .31).

Particularly striking is the relationship between media coverage of moral values and political

blog discussion of moral values. Each additional story on moral values in the mainstream media

17

was predicted to produce an additional .4 blog posts on moral values and, even more impressive,

media coverage of moral values explains nearly 20% of the variance in blogging activity on

moral values. For some issues, therefore, media coverage does seem to exert a strong influence

on blog content.

On the other hand, there was no statistically significant correlation between media

coverage and political blog posts for 17 of the 25 political issues included in this study. For 8 of

these 17 issues (North Korea, immigration, Afghanistan, affirmative action, terrorism, No Child

Left Behind, welfare and the forged documents controversy involving Dan Rather), the amount

of media coverage explained none of the variance in the number of political blog postings.

Furthermore, the slope coefficients of the regression analysis for 16 of these 17 issues were all

small and statistically insignificant. The one exception was media coverage and blog postings on

Iran – where approximately 17 stories are predicted to produce one additional political blog post.

For the majority of issues, however, it appears that there is little relationship between the amount

of media coverage and the number of political blog posts.

In order to explore the possibility that the overall findings obscure important differences

in how partisans respond to mainstream media messages, I also analyzed the relationship

between media coverage and blog posts for Democrats and Republicans. The results of this

analysis are presented in Table 3. As Table 3 clearly displays, there are striking differences

between the strength of the relationship between issue coverage and blog posts for Democrats

and Republicans. While there is, for example, a significant correlation, between media coverage

and blog posts for Democrats on Iraq, the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, gay marriage

and weapons of mass destruction, there is no significant correlation between media coverage and

blog posts for these issues for Republicans. Similarly, while Republicans exhibit a significant

correlation between media coverage and blog posts on abortion, Osama bin Laden, the military

18

draft and the crisis in the Sudan, there is no such correlation on these issues for Democrats. In

fact, the only issues that show a statistically significant correlation for both Democrats and

Republicans are moral values and stem cell research.

To put the differences between Democrats and Republicans into even starker view, it is

worth considering the differences in the slope coefficients for some of these issues. For

Republicans, for example, each additional story on the military draft is predicted to produce a .24

increase in the number of blog posts on the military draft and media coverage on this issue

explains 10% of the overall variation in blog posts. For Democrats, however, the slope

coefficient for the military draft is a statistically insignificant -.03 and media coverage explains

none of the variation in the number of blog posts. On the issue of weapons of mass destruction a

similar divide emerges: eight new stories on weapons of mass destruction in the mainstream

media are predicted to produce one new blog post for Democrats (b = .13) but no new blog posts

for Republicans (b = 0). In short, Republicans and Democrats respond in very different ways to

mainstream media coverage based on the issue being covered.

In addition to differences in how partisans respond to mainstream media coverage, there

may be important differences in the strength of the relationship between media coverage and

blog posts across individuals. In order to explore the possibility that certain individuals are likely

to fit the echo chamber hypothesis better than other individuals, I analyzed the relationship

between media coverage and blog posts separately for each of the 25 political blogs in my

sample. The results of this analysis are presented in Table 4. Analyzing the strength of the

relationship between media coverage and blog posts for each individual blogger reveals that

there are, in fact, important differences between bloggers. More specifically, it seems possible to

identify at least three different kinds of political bloggers based on how responsive the blogger is

to media coverage. First, some political bloggers post in ways that have no relationship

19

whatsoever to mainstream media coverage (meaning that there is no correlation between media

coverage and their blog posts on any issues). In my sample, 11 of the 25 political blogs fell into

this category. As a general rule, it appears that these political bloggers tend to be less prolific in

their posting and these blogs tend to include a significant amount of discussion about the

bloggers personal life in addition to discussion about political issues. Indeed, these political

bloggers posted an average of only .5 posts per day (compared with 1.5 posts per day in the rest

of the sample) and were less likely than the other blogs to mention almost every political issue

keyword.

Second, some political bloggers seem to be responsive to mainstream media coverage

only on one or two issues. To be more precise, seven of the 25 bloggers in my sample displayed

a significant relationship between media coverage and blog posts on one issue and three of the 25

bloggers displayed a significant relationship between media coverage and blog posts on two

issues. In general, these political blogs tend to be updated with greater frequency than the

political blogs that showed no significant correlation between media coverage and blog posts

(with an average of 1.3 posts per day) and are significantly more likely to include mention issue

keywords in their posts.

Finally, a few political blogs showed a strong relationship with media coverage on a

number of different issues. Four of the political blogs in my sample (“2nd Battalion 94th

Artillery,” “Anti-Climacus,” “Buffalo Pundit” and “George in Denver”), displayed significant

correlations between media coverage and blog posts on three or more of the political issues

measured in this study. These political blogs tended to have the highest levels of activity (an

average of 2 posts per day) and were among the highest in the overall percentage of posts

mentioning one of the issue keywords.

20

One final piece of evidence that can be brought to bear on the question of the relationship

between mainstream media coverage and blog posts comes from the links that political bloggers

use in their blogs. According to the echo chamber hypothesis, mainstream media sources should

be the primary source of political information for political bloggers and, as a result, links to

mainstream media sources should be relatively frequent when compared to other sources (such

as other political blogs, non-governmental organizations or partisan publications) and relatively

constant over time. In order to determine which sources are important to political bloggers, I

counted the number of times each political blog linked to academic (.edu domain names),

governmental (.gov domain names), mainstream media,17 partisan media,18 liberal and

conservative “A-list” blogs19 and liberal and conservative organizations.20

Perhaps unsurprisingly, mainstream media sites were by far the most common sources

linked to by political bloggers in my sample. On average, a political blog linked to a mainstream

media source once every five posts whereas an A-list political blog was linked to only once

every 25 posts, a partisan media outlet linked to only once every 50 posts and a partisan

17 I defined the mainstream media as the following organizations: USA Today, the New York Times, Yahoo News, the BBC, the New York Daily News, NBC, the Financial Times, the Associated Press, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, the New York Post, Reuters, the Washington Post, Fox News, the Washington Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the San Jose Mercury News, the Sacramento Bee, CNN, the Boston Herald, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times, the Denver Post, Boston.com, NJ.com and Ohio.com. 18 Links to five conservative and five liberal media sites were measured. The liberal sites were: AirAmericaRadio.com, Michealmoore.com, Motherjones.com, Salon.com and TheNation.com. The conservative sites were: DrudgeReport.com, NationalReview.com, OpinionJournal.com, TownHall.com and WeeklyStandard.com.19 Links to the top 20 liberal and top 20 conservative blogs as listed in Adamic and Glance (2005) were counted. Conservative A-list political blogs included: Allahpundit.com, Andrewsullivan.com, Belmontclub.blogspot.com, Blogsforbush.com, Captainsquartersblog.com, Deanesmay.com, Hughhewitt.com, Indcjournal.com, Instapundit.com, Littlegreenfootballs.com, Michellemalkin.com, Mypetjawa.mu.nu, Powerlineblog.com, Realclearpolitics.com, Rogerlsimon.com, Timblair.spleenville.com, Vodkapundit.com, Volokh.com, Windsofchange.net and Wizbangblog.com. Liberal A-list political blogs included: Americablog.blogspot.com, Atrios.blogspot.com, Blog.johnkerry.com, Crookedtimber.org, Dailykos.com, Digsbysblog.blogspot.com, j-bradford-delong.net, jameswolcott.com, juancole.com, mydd.com, oliverwillis.com, pandagon.net, politicalwire.com, prospect.org/weblog, talkingpointsmemo.com, talkleft.com, theleftcoaster.com, washingtonmonthly.com, wonkette.com and yglesias.typepad.com.20 The liberal organizations were: Aarp.org, Aclu.org, Acorn.org, Aflcio.org, Foe.org, Graypanthers.org, Greenpeaceusa.org, Lwv.org, Moveon.org, Naral.org, Nature.org, Ngltf.org, Now.org, Plannedparenthood.org, Rainbowpush.org and Sierraclub.org. The conservative organizations were: Aim.org, Cato.org, cc.org, frc.org, heritage.org, jbs.org, nra.org and nrlc.org.

21

organization linked to only once every 350 posts. It is important to note, however, that, despite

the relative frequency of mainstream media links, only one in five political blog posts on average

actually linked to a media source and that, when taken together, links to alternative sources of

information comprise a considerable percentage of the overall links provided by political

bloggers. Overall, therefore, mainstream media sources are not an entirely dominant influence in

the political blogosphere.

In addition to not being a dominant influence in the aggregate, it appears that the

influence that mainstream media sources have over the political blogosphere ebbs and flows over

time. Indeed, as Figure 1 clearly shows, the number of links to mainstream media sources is not

consistent over time – with daily links to media sources ranging between 15 and 0. A closer look

at the data reveals that the largest spikes in media links occur in late August and in mid

November. Although a definitive conclusion about the causes of the increases and decreases in

the use of media links is beyond the scope of this paper, it can be safely concluded that

mainstream media sources do not attract the attention of ordinary political bloggers in the same

way at all times.

Discussion

So what do these findings suggest about the echo chamber hypothesis? According to the

echo chamber hypothesis, the relationship between media coverage on an issue and the number

of blog posts should be positive (r > 0), strong (b closer to 1 than to 0) and tight (a high R²). The

data presented here suggest that the echo chamber hypothesis is accurate for some issues but not

for others and, more importantly, that there is considerable variation in the propensity of

individual political bloggers to act as echo chambers on certain issues. With this conclusion in

mind, what kinds of generalizations might be drawn about the kinds of issues and the kinds of

bloggers that fit the predictions of the echo chamber hypothesis?

22

With respect to the kinds of issues that are likely to exhibit an echo chamber effect, there

appears to be no greater correspondence between media coverage and blog posts on domestic

versus foreign policy issues. Indeed, in the overall sample, significant relationships between

media coverage and blog posts were uncovered on four domestic policy issues – abortion, the

military draft, moral values and stem cell research – and four foreign policy issues – Iraq,

prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the crisis in the Sudan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The

distribution of significant relationships was roughly similar even within partisan groups.

Republicans displayed significant relationships on four domestic policy issues – abortion, the

military draft, moral values and stem cell research – and two foreign policy issues – the crisis in

the Sudan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden – while Democrats displayed significant

relationships for three domestic policy issues – same-sex marriage, moral values and stem cell

research – and three foreign policy issues – Iraq, the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib and

curtailing access to weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, in addition to the issues that did

display significant relationships, foreign policy issues were not more likely than domestic policy

issues to display no significant relationship. More precisely, five of the eleven foreign policy

issues in this study (Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, the war on terrorism and Al Qaeda)

displayed no significant correlation between media coverage and blogs posts and of the eight of

the fourteen domestic policy issues (immigration, affirmative action, welfare, No Child Left

Behind, homeland security, the advertising campaign by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the

forged documents controversy involving Dan Rather and Micheal Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11)

showed no relationship. Overall, therefore, political bloggers do not appear to be more

responsive to the messages of the mainstream media on foreign policy issues.

Although political bloggers are not more likely to echo the messages of the mainstream

media on foreign policy issues in general, there is one subset of domestic policy issues that

23

political bloggers are particularly unlikely to display an echo chamber effect on: issues relating

to the development of the presidential campaign. To put it simply, the data presented in this

study show no relationship whatsoever between mainstream media coverage and the number of

blog posts on any of the events – such as the advertising campaign by the Swift Boat Veterans

for Truth, the forged documents controversy involving Dan Rather and Micheal Moore’s

blockbuster Fahrenheit 9/11 – that were widely claimed to have a dramatic impact on both

public opinion and on the dynamics campaign strategy. In fact, there was no significant

relationship between media coverage on these issues and political blogs in a single one of the 25

political blogs included in this study. These findings are particularly surprising given that one

recent study by Cornfield et al. (2005) has found that A-list political blogs did respond in

significant ways to media coverage on campaign developments such as the Osama bin Laden

tape, Kerry’s mention of March Cheney and the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s decision to air an

anti-Kerry documentary. Ordinary political bloggers, it appears, seem more likely to echo media

messages when they relate to the substance of politics rather than the developments of political

campaigns.

Making generalizations about the kinds of issues that Democratic and Republican

political bloggers are responsive to is difficult. As suggested above, Democrats and Republicans

are equally responsive to media coverage on foreign policy and domestic policy issues.

Interestingly, however, the specific foreign and domestic policy issues that they respond to are

very different. Democrats, for example, show a significant relationship between media coverage

and blog posts on Iraq, Abu Ghraib, same-sex marriage, weapons of mass destruction, moral

values and stem cell research whereas Republicans show a significant relationship on abortion,

Osama bin Laden, the military draft, the Sudan, moral values and stem cell research. One

possible explanation for these partisan differences is that other, more partisan channels of

24

communication – such as A-list political blogs, messages from the political parties and opinion-

based publications – were reinforcing the mainstream media’s coverage of certain issues and, as

a result, partisan bloggers were more likely to blog on these issues. Unfortunately, the data

presented here cannot be used to assess this hypothesis. Ultimately, content analysis of these

other channels of communication will have to be conducted in order to determine why

Democrats and Republicans differ so dramatically in the issues they are likely to echo.

With respect to the kinds of political blogs that are likely to echo the messages of the

mainstream media, the conclusions are more obvious. To state it simply, political blogs that are

more active (i.e. have a higher average number of posts per day) are more likely to display an

echo chamber effect on all issues than political blogs that are less active. The reasons for this are

probably straightforward: those who blog about political issues more often are probably more

likely to pay care about politics more and, as a result more likely to follow news coverage

closely and those who blog about political issues more often are probably in greater need of

material to blog about and, therefore, more likely to respond to media coverage of political

issues.

Conclusion

I began this paper by arguing that political blogs are best understood as a new form of

political expression. Although this claim may appear somewhat innocuous on its face, I have

argued here that it is crucial to directing our attention towards a number of important questions.

In this paper, I have tried to answer one of these questions – whether the political blogosphere is

an “echo chamber” for mainstream media messages? The data presented here suggest that

ordinary political blogs do sometimes act like echo chambers for mainstream media messages

and sometimes do not. More specifically, this paper has shown that there are significant

differences between the issues that Republicans and Democrats echo and that prolific political

25

bloggers are more likely than unprolific political bloggers to follow media coverage on political

issues.

The findings of this paper suggest a number of directions for future research. First, future

research into the existence of an echo chamber effect in the political blogosphere should extend

the analysis presented here by incorporating more mainstream media sources than I have used

here. To state the matter simply, my measure of mainstream media coverage – the New York

Times – may be a poor measure and, as a result, the results of my analysis could be misleading.

Indeed, if the coverage presented in the New York Times is significantly different from the

coverage of other mainstream media outlets and political bloggers are more likely to turn to these

other mainstream media outlets for their news, the findings presented here may be biased in

favor of or in opposition to the echo chamber hypothesis. In order to avoid this problem, future

research should follow the lead of Cornfield et al (2005) and conduct content analysis on a wide

variety of mainstream media sources – ranging from newspapers to cable news broadcasts.

Second, in addition to including more mainstream media sources in the analysis, future

work should look beyond the mainstream media and investigate the possibility of other kinds of

echo chamber effects. More precisely, the possibility that ordinary political blogs are echo

chambers for the messages of A-list political blogs, partisan newsletters, candidate speeches or

opinion journals needs to be tested alongside the hypothesis that ordinary political bloggers echo

the messages of the mainstream media. Given that some have suggested that political bloggers

are individuals who distrust mainstream media coverage and, therefore, are less likely to echo

mainstream media messages, testing for an echo chamber effect with these alternative channels

of communication is even more important. In other words, political blogs may be an echo

chamber for some sources other than the mainstream media.21

21 Cornfield et al (2005) have taken an initial step in this direction by measuring campaign messages along with mainstream media coverage but their analysis focuses only on A-list political blogs and not on the more numerous ordinary political blogs.

26

Finally, in addition to testing the claim that the ideas discussed by political bloggers are

the same as the issues covered in the mainstream media, future work on political blogs also

needs to analyze the other two dimensions of the echo chamber hypothesis: that the positions

taken by political bloggers on political issues greatly resemble the positions taken by the

blogger’s own party leaders and that the frames and justifications employed by political bloggers

are the same as the frames and justifications of the blogger’s party leaders. This paper’s data

measures only the amount of discussion on certain political issues and not the character of it. As

a result, it is unclear whether media messages are being criticized, supported or juxtaposed with

messages from other sources. Saying that Republicans are more responsive to media messages

on abortion, for example, cannot tell us whether they are responding by repeating the frames and

justifications of their party leaders or by criticizing them. A more detailed content analysis that

takes the issue mention as the unit of analysis rather than the blog post as the unit of analysis

would provide the type of data to explore these other components of the echo chamber

hypothesis.

27

Appendix: Issue Keywords

The issue to be measured is listed in bold. The keywords that counted as a mention of the issue are listed below.

AbortionAbortionPro-choiceRight to chooseRight to LifePro-life

Abu GhraibAbu GhraibPrisoner abuse

Affirmative ActionAffirmative actionReverse discrimination

AfghanistanAfghanistan

Al QaedaAl Qaeda

Bin LadenBin Laden

Dan RatherDan Rather

DraftDraft

Fahrenheit 9/11Fahrenheit 9/11

Gay MarriageGay marriageSame-sex marriageHomosexual marriage

Homeland SecurityHomeland Security

ImmigrationImmigrantsImmigrationIllegal aliens

IranIran

IraqIraqIraqi

Moral ValuesMoral values

No Child Left BehindNo Child Left Behind

28

North KoreaNorth Korea

Patriot ActPatriot Act

Social SecuritySocial Security

Stem CellStem cell

SudanSudan

Swift boat veteransSwift boat veterans

TerrorTerrorTerroristTerrorism

Weapons of Mass DestructionWMDWeapons of Mass Destruction

WelfareWelfare

29

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Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Figure 1 – Links to Mainstream Media Sources

Figure 1: Links to Mainstream Media Sources

0

2

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6

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14

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7/1/

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7/11

/2004

7/21

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7/31

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9/9/

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31

Table 1 – Final Sample of Political Blogs

Blog Title Address2nd Battalion 94th Artillery http://294fa.blogspot.com/AgnostoLibertarianTechnoGeek http://ddhead.blogspot.com/An etherealgirl's adventure http://etherealgirl.blogspot.comAnti-Climacus http://troester.blogspot.com/Buffalo Pundit http://wny4clark.blogspot.com/Cabin Fever Online http://www.cabinfever.modblog.comCaveat Aranea http://caveataranea.blogspot.comEricRosenfield.com http://ericrosenfield.comGeorge In Denver http://georgeindenver.blogspot.comJustin Blanton http://justinblanton.comMiranda's Window Dressing http://mirandaswindowdressing.blogspot.comNeoconservadroid http://neoconservadroid.blogspot.com/Occasional Blog http://occasionalblog.blogspot.comOdious Woman http://odiouswoman.blogspot.comPatriot Blog http://patriotblog.comRoblog http://www.roblogpolitics.blogspot.com/Sandcastles and Cubicles http://sandcastlesandcubicles.blogspot.comShepherd's Pie, Web Edition http://kenshepherd.blogspot.comStephanie Chu http://www.stephaniechu.com/The Doctor's Log http://masterdev.dyndns.dk/drslogThe Patriette http://thepatriette.com/The Turnspit Daily http://www.turnspit.comThe Weekly Subversive http://weeklysubversive.blogspot.com/The World According to Nick http://schweitn.blogspot.com/Vulgar Boatman http://vulgarboatman.blogspot.com

32

Table 2 – Relationship between media coverage and blog posts in the overall sample

Issue R R² BAbortion .22*** .05 .16**Abu Ghraib .26*** .07 .09***Affirmative Action -.07 .00 .00Afghanistan .00 .00 .00Al Qaeda .12 .01 .03Bin Laden .22*** .05 .18**Dan Rather -.01 .00 .00Draft .21*** .05 .21**Fahrenheit 9/11 -.11 .01 .00Gay Marriage .13 .02 .18*Homeland Security -.08 .01 .00Immigration .03 .00 .00Iran .15 .02 .06*Iraq .25*** .06 .13**Moral Values .44*** .19 .40***No Child Left Behind -.04 .00 .00North Korea -.02 .00 .00Stem Cell .31*** .10 .13***Sudan .21** .04 .06Swift Boat -.09 .01 -.03Terrorism -.07 .00 -.01Welfare -.04 .00 .00WMD .16 .02 .12*Entries for B are unstandardized regression coefficients.*** p < .01 ** p < .05 * p < .10

33

Table 3 – Relationship between media coverage and blog posts by partisanship

Democrats RepublicansIssue r R² B R R² BAbortion .10 .01 .05 .24*** .06 .08**Abu Ghraib .31*** .10 .09*** -.02 .00 .00Affirmative Action -.06 .00 -.02 -.05 .00 -.01Afghanistan .09 .01 .02 .01 .00 .00Al Qaeda .01 .00 0 .14 .02 .03Bin Laden .11 .01 .06 .22*** .05 .10**Dan Rather -.02 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00Draft -.05 .00 -.03 .31*** .10 .24***Fahrenheit 9/11 -.11 .01 .00 -.04 .00 .00Gay Marriage .22*** .05 .23** -.03 .00 -.02Homeland Security -.07 .00 .00 -.04 .00 .00Immigration .02 .00 .00 .01 .00 .00Iran .11 .01 .03 .11 .01 .03Iraq .22*** .05 .08** .10 .01 .03Moral Values .46*** .21 .33*** .18** .03 .08**No Child Left Behind -.02 .00 .00 -.04 .00 .00North Korea -.11 .01 -.01 .06 .00 .01Stem Cell .30*** .09 .09*** .16** .03 .04**Sudan .09 .01 .01 .21*** .04 .04**Swift Boat -.06 .00 .00 -.10 .01 -.02Terrorism -.10 .01 -.02 .01 .00 .00Welfare -.01 .00 .00 -.05 .00 .00WMD .19** .03 .13** .01 .00 .00Entries for B are unstandardized regression coefficients.*** p < .01 ** p < .05 * p < .10

34

Table 4 – Relationship between media coverage and blog posts by individual blog

2nd

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Abortion .11 .15 -.05 .27*** .20** .16** † † † .20** † † .03Abu Ghraib -.02 † † † .13 † † † † † † † .00Affirmative Action -.04 -.04 † † -.04 † † † † † † † †Afghanistan -.14 .05 † -.20** .11 † † † † -.04 † † .10Al Qaeda -.02 † .15 -.02 .01 † † † † -.04 † † .09Bin Laden .35*** -.08 † .12 .06 † † † † -.06 † † -.03Dan Rather -.03 .11 † -.03 -.03 .00 † † † † † † †Draft .24*** -.04 † -.03 .01 † † † -.03 † † † †Fahrenheit 9/11 -.07 .05 † † † † † † † † † † †Gay Marriage † -.03 -.05 -.09 .07 .09 † † † .22*** † † .09Homeland Security -.02 .00 † † -.03 .00 † † † -.02 † -.02 †Immigration -.07 .00 .05 † .05 -.07 † † .00 † † -.03 †Iran .18** -.09 † -.02 -.06 † † † † .19** † -.03 .07Iraq -.02 .05 .11 .20** .20** .14 † .01 .11 .07 † .07 .04Moral Values † .20** -.02 -.02 .43*** .20** † † † .29*** † † .41***No Child Left Behind † † † † -.01 † † † .01 † † † †North Korea .06 .09 † -.11 -.05 .09 † † † .00 † † -.02Patriot Act .01 † † † .07 † † † † .10 † † †Social Security † .11 † † .10 .11 .02 † † .08 † † †Sudan † † † .07 † † † † † † † † †Stem Cell † .08 † † † † † † † .45*** † .12 †Swift Boat -.08 -.02 † † -.05 † † † -.02 † † † †Terrorism .03 -.05 .02 -.10 -.05 -.10 .01 † -.04 -.03 † † -.08Welfare -.03 -.03 -.02 -.01 -.05 † † † † † † † †WMD .02 .04 † -.04 .20** .04 † † † .13 † † -.10*** p < .01 ** p < .05 * p < .10† No posts on this issue.

Table 4 (continued) – Relationship between media coverage and blog posts by individual blog

35

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Abortion .03 † -.01 -.07 .15 .13 † .11 † -.09 .21** †Abu Ghraib † † † † -.04 .04 † .64*** † .07 .06 †Affirmative Action -.04 † † † † † † † † -.04 † †Afghanistan .02 † -.01 † .11 .10 † .01 -.10 .09 -.11 †Al Qaeda † † .00 † .42*** -.07 † † † -.02 -.04 †Bin Laden .00 -.06 -.08 † .00 -.03 † † † .12 .10 †Dan Rather † † .00 .00 .00 -.04 † † † † † †Draft † † .23*** † .23*** -.03 † -.03 † -.05 -.03 †Fahrenheit 9/11 † † -.09 † .08 -.02 † † † -.09 -.10 -.10Gay Marriage .12 † -.07 † .03 .00 † † † .09 .11 †Homeland Security -.04 † -.03 † -.02 -.02 † -.02 † -.03 -.02 †Immigration † † .00 † .04 .09 † † † .02 † †Iran † .04 .09 † .02 .04 † † † .09 -.05 †Iraq -.06 .11 .01 -.02 .06 .13 † -.01 .05 .16** .04 -.12Moral Values † † † † -.02 -.02 † † † -.02 † †No Child Left Behind † † -.02 † -.02 -.02 † † -.02 -.02 † †North Korea † † † † -.02 .08 † † † -.12 -.02 †Patriot Act † † † † .02 † † † † † † †Social Security † † † † .06 .03 † † † † .02 †Sudan † † † † .04 .28*** † † † .09 † †Stem Cell † † .20** † † .03 † † † .07 † †Swift Boat † † -.03 -.02 -.04 -.04 † † -.03 -.03 -.03 †Terrorism -.08 -.04 -.01 .09 .13 -.08 † -.13 -.05 -.01 .00 -.04Welfare † † † .01 -.04 † † -.03 † .07 -.03 †WMD † .14 -.06 † -.11 .09 † † † .06 -.08 .23****** p < .01 ** p < .05 * p < .10† No posts on this issue.

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