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T HE I M P A CT O F BR I TI S H
P O L I TI CA L BL O GGI NG O N
P O L I TI CA L JOU RNA L I S M A ND
W ES TMI NS TER

THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICS, QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

STUDENT NUMBER: 052882234


WORD COUNT: 13,331
A RESEARCH PROJECT S UBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE: B.A. (HONOURS) IN POLITIC S.
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I have read and understood the College regulations on plagiarism contained in the
Student Handbook. The work contained in this project is solely my own and all the
sources used are cited in the text and contained in my bibliography.

Signed:

Date:
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ABSTRACT

The objective of this research project is to establish the extent to which the hypothesis
is true. It states that the platform of the blog, as a part of and facilitated by the Internet,
enables individuals outside of the mainstream media to impact upon and affect those
within the arena of political journalism and Westminster.

Chapter I explores the ‘new media environment’ in which blogging as whole has been
established as a result of the communications revolution. This chapter argues that,
while the form of ‘old media’ might be under threat, its content will survive if adapted to
‘new media’, thus rendering their dichotomy non-existent. The central argument –
disagreed with by some academics and industry figures – is that the Internet, by offering
no content of its own, has fundamentally altered the media landscape. This has broad
implications for the hypothesis which are explored in relation to political journalism in
Chapter II, and Westminster in Chapter III through the use of case studies.

Chapter II has two main arguments: first that, as the ‘old’ and ‘new media’ division is
false, so is the perceived division between journalists and bloggers, because the blog,
like the Internet, is nothing in and of itself. Mainstream media journalists blog their
journalism, others use their blog to become journalists. Secondly, through the sharing
and dissemination of information and co-operation in delivering journalism of all kinds,
their relationship is symbiotic rather than adversarial. The hypothesis is established in
theory, updated, and then substantiated by the case studies in Chapter III. They
demonstrate that the nature of the impact and change brought about by the content of a
blog depends not only on content but also the author. More importantly they show that
there are certain characteristics of the blog as a tool that, when combined with readable
content, enable it to create impact and affect change. These findings are consolidated in
a further re-statement of the hypothesis as the final conclusion.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

Hypothesis
Methodology
Problems 2
Findings 3

CHAPTER I: THE NEW MEDIA ENVIRONMENT 4

Change from the User’s Perspective 5


Change from the Journalist’s Perspective 7
Old Media vs. New Media: The False Distinction 9
How the Internet Changes Everything 11

CHAPTER II: BLOGS & THE BLOGOSPHERE 15

Definitions: ‘Blog’ & ‘Blogosphere’


The British Political Blogosphere 18
‘Stat Porn’ – Circulation vs. Unique Visitors/Visits
Content 21
Old Media vs. New Media: The False Distinction (Again) 22
Conclusion 27
Updated Hypothesis

CHAPTER III: CASE STUDIES 28

Case Study I: Peter Hain’s Resignation 29


The Blogosphere’s Impact 30
Case Study II: Tom Harris MP: Spending More Time With His Blog 34
Conclusion 37

CONCLUSION 39
BIBLIOGRAPHY 43
APPENDIX 1 49
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INTRODUCTION

Hypothesis

The hypothesis is that the platform of the blog, as a part of and facilitated by the
Internet, enables individuals outside of the mainstream media to impact upon and affect
those within the arena of political journalism and Westminster.

Methodology

The statistical evidence used comes from a variety of sources, mostly online. The Audit
Bureau of Circulation’s reports were used as they are the industry standard
measurement of newspaper circulation. Much of the data about the blogosphere was
obtained using the gateway to it, Technorati1. Statistics for traffic received by individual
blogs was obtained from the blogs themselves and then cross-referenced with
Alexa.com2 and the Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging in the UK3.

Literary evidence comes in the form of analyses from media figures, journalists and
academic journal articles, mostly gathered online given the nature of the subject.
Additionally I interviewed via email, Charlie Beckett, founding Director of POLIS; Iain
Dale, publisher, pundit, former Conservative Party candidate and leading political
blogger; Phil Hendren, writer, IT systems administrator and well-read political blogger
under his alias, “Dizzy”; Tom Harris, backbench Labour MP and the subject of the second
case study, and, via telephone, Paul Staines who blogs as “Guido Fawkes”. In the
interests of fair comparison the questions posed in writing were read aloud to Paul
Staines and the call recorded with his permission. The list of question can be found in
Appendix 1.

One book in particular, Charlie Beckett’s SuperMedia, has proved invaluable to my


research in terms of information, argument, and case study structure. Google’s

1 Technorati is an internet search engine and indexer for and of blogs, and can be found at
<http://technorati.com/>
2 Alexa provides information on web traffic to other websites and can be found at

<http://www.alexa.com/>
3 Total Politics, 2008, Guide to Political Blogging in the UK
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Advanced Archive News Search collates and orders news stories chronologically on the
basis of search criteria, which was very useful in assembling the case studies in Chapter
III.

Problems

I found that comparing newspaper circulation data and website traffic is highly
problematic, largely because there is no way of measuring the exact number of
individuals who have visited a website. The technicalities of this are as follows: figures
are available for ‘Absolute unique users’ and ‘Visits’. The former represents the
individual doing the visiting, not the totality of their visits. Therefore if one person visits
a website 30 times in one month that is considered one absolute unique user, because
their identity hasn’t changed. ‘Visits’ represent the sum total of requests made of the
website by a user, which if made within a short space of time are calculated as one visit.
The problem is that if someone takes longer than half an hour (this can vary) to read
one page, they are assumed to have left, and further activity is logged as a new visit.
Thus, one overstates and the other understates the true figure, and neither is analogous
to the sale of a newspaper which in turn is not represented exactly by circulation
figures.

My solution was to show figures for both absolute unique users and visits, with a brief
explanation stating that the true figure lies somewhere in between. The purpose of the
graph in Chapter II that makes this comparison is to give an impression of the status,
through general readership figures, of one particular blog in relation to the more
familiar medium of the newspaper, and as such exact data is non-essential.

A less complex problem, but one that needs addressing if only for clarity, was posed by
Paul Staines’ use of “Guido Fawkes” as his online identity. I have used Charlie Beckett’s
approach of using “Guido” or “Guido Fawkes” when referring to things he has written
online, and his real name when referring to the person; for example, when quoting him
from my interview.
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Findings

My research produced several main findings, chief among which is that the hypothesis
is theoretically correct but in need of some qualification. Chapters I and II show that
political journalism, like all journalism, is unquestionably affected by the blogosphere.
Chapters II and III show that political bloggers, Paul Staines in particular, have used
their blogs to publish and disseminate information that has had a discernable impact on
Westminster. However, it became clear during my research that high profile examples
of this are rare, and in our interview Paul Staines stressed that while there are no
barriers to entering the blogosphere, there are “huge barriers to success”. This idea is
explored further in Chapter II and the conclusion. Suffice to say, it is a claim
substantiated by the evidence. Whilst this weakens the hypothesis to some extent in
that it slightly overstates the case and in retrospect sounds slightly euphoric about the
power of the blog, it does not negate it. Rather, it is a useful finding that enables the
hypothesis to be modified and re-established, the mechanics of which are dealt with in
the conclusion.
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CHAPTER I: THE NEW MEDIA


ENVIRONMENT

In order to assess the impact of political blogging on anything at all, the environment in
which it lives and that it impacts needs to be explored and understood. This is not a
simple task, because it is an environment in flux. It has undergone, and is still
undergoing, rapid, substantial and lasting change. The environment is media:

And when I say media I mean media: the mass, the globalized, the regional. The
national, the local, the personal media; the broadcast and interactive media; the
audio and audio-visual and the printed media; the electronic and the mechanical,
the digital and the analogue media; the big screen and the small screen media;
the dominant and alternative media; the fixed and the mobile, the convergent
and the stand-alone media. And this lack of discrimination, this inclusivity, is
deliberate.4

Given the amorphousness of such an environment and the difficulties in drawing its
parameters, it would be difficult to substantiate the claim that it, as an entity, has
changed. That is not the argument. Rather it is that change has taken place within it, and
a small part of that change is the impact of political blogging.

The arguments about what this change is and its origins, catalysts and outcomes, are
wide-ranging; at times diametrically opposed, other times differing only on minor but
important subtleties. The focus here is not to define media, new or old, analogue or
digital, but to understand the composition of it as an environment and some of the
relationships between its component parts, in order that, as one of them, the impact of
political blogging can be made tangible and properly understood.

4 Silverstone, R., 2006, Media and morality: On the rise of the mediapolis, p. 5
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Change from the User’s Perspective

We are all caught in the greatest upheaval our industry and the institution of
journalism has ever faced.5

This is the view of Robert Rosenthal, ex-Managing Editor of The San Francisco Chronicle,
as expressed in his resignation memo. The upheaval he speaks of could refer to several
things, all of them in decline: newspaper circulation figures, jobs and revenue. Figures
are the starkest way of justifying Rosenthal’s statement. His statement refers to the
industry as a whole, but in Britain alone, between 1955 and 2005, total newspaper
circulation figures (in millions) fell from 32.11 to 23.406. To take a single example, The
News of the World sold nearly eight and a half million copies each week in the 1950s7. In
February 2009 it sold just 754,982 a week8. What is more important however, is why
Rosenthal made the above claim in 2007 as opposed to any time from 1955 onwards.
Advertising revenue plays an important part. Although it has been declining steadily
since the 1960s because of television, Hampton argues that because they shared subject
matter and supplemented each others’ content, television and newspapers enjoyed a
symbiotic relationship.9

An argument can be made on the basis of statistics alone that the Internet is a threat to
newspapers because it has siphoned off their advertising revenue, in some ways the
foundation of their economic structure. It has declined at a much greater rate since
widespread use of the Internet in the late 1990s10. However, the picture is more
complex and not explainable by a two-way cause and effect argument, partly because of
the global economic recession which has decreased advertising revenue online as well
as off11. The real state of affairs will be examined later in the section ‘Old Media vs. New
Media’. Suffice to say, like most of their colleagues, the owners of the The San Francisco

5 Rainey, R., 2nd June 2007, The Times’ changes pick up speed as many depart, LA Times,
<http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/02/business/fi-buyout2>
6 Kuhn, R., 2007, Politics and the Media in Britain, p. 8 Table 1.4
7 Seymour-Ure, C.K., The National Daily Press in Political Communications Transformed; From Morrison to

Mandelson, 2001, p. 89
8 Guardian.co.uk, 6th March 2009, ABCs: National Sunday newspaper circulation data February 2009,

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2009/mar/06/abcs-pressandpublishing>
9 Hampton, M., 2007, The United Kingdom Press, Media, TV, Radio, Newspapers,

<http://www.pressreference.com>
10 Kuhn, R., Ibid., states that the largest drop in British total circulation figures took place between 1999

and 2005, with a plunge of 5.82 million


11 MacMillan, R., 26th November 2008, Newspaper ad revenue falls. Again, Reuters blogs,

<http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2008/11/26/newspaper-ad-revenue-falls-again/>
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Chronicle, from which Rosenthal was resigning, had announced plans earlier in the
month to cut jobs by 25% and restructure the paper12. This was indicative of an
institution-wide cull; the second part of Rosenthal’s ‘upheaval’:

Journalism is being turned upside down. It is on a roller-coaster ride that can be


exhilarating but rather scary. Across the world thousands of journalists are
losing their jobs. Hundreds have lost their lives. It’s not a “safe” career in any
sense now.13

By virtue of the figures alone, few would deny the above assertion from Charlie Beckett,
founding Director of POLIS, the forum for research and debate into journalism and
society at the London School of Economics. However, the question of why this is the case
is hotly debated. Many academics put it down to what is variously called ‘The
Communications Revolution’ or ‘The Technological Revolution’, depending on who is
making the argument. Certain themes are recurrent in all of the literature on this
subject, but three stand out more than the others combined. They are ‘choice’, ‘power’
and ‘freedom’. The BBC made a four part series called The Communications Revolution
that was first broadcast in August 2006. In it, “Mike Williams looks at the way
communication and the associated technology is changing our lives, the way we do
business and the way we learn.”14 In the third episode, Adam Hume, Head of Digital
Publishing at Red Bee Media15, provides an insight into both the way in which the
industry views the revolution and what it entails:

I think the last time there was a revolution like this was when Caxton invented
the printing press [sic.], when we went from the handwritten Bible to the
availability of the written word for the first time, to a mass audience... It gives
them choice and the ability to consume what they want, when they want... Power

12 Baker, D.R., May 29th 2007, SFGate, Chronicle managing editor to leave paper as part of shakeup,
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/29/BAGGPQ3FLM4.DTL>
13 Beckett, C. 2008, SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World, p. 9
14 BBC News, 14th August 2006, The Communications Revolution,

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/4791315.stm>
15 <http://www.redbeemedia.com> Red Bee Media was previously a commercial subsidiary of the BBC,

who sold it in 2005.


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is shifting from the broadcaster to the audience...We can make choices; what we
want, when we want it.16

Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, agrees, and goes into more detail about
what this power shift really looks like:

I think the revolution in media is a real revolution. And it’s not about switching
off the TV and switching on the computer. It’s about a world where the TV gives
you some stuff, the computer gives you some stuff, it’s a world where you can
move programmes from the TV to the computer and back again. It’s a much more
fluid world. When people talk about the golden age of broadcasting; well, it’s
about to hit us.17

Rupert Murdoch also identifies the shift succinctly:

[Young people]... want their news on demand, when it works for them. They
want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it.18

These insights help us to understand what the revolution is and how it feels to live
through it, but they are essentially descriptive. In order to understand what this
revolution means for journalism and how it changes the dynamics within the media
environment, we need to explore the function of the journalist.

Change from the Journalist’s Perspective

Ellen Hume describes the role of journalist as “the credible mediator between the
citizen and public information”19. Beckett agrees: “The business of journalism promises
relevant information that people can use to construct their lives... Which maternity
hospital? Which vaccinations? Which mortgage? Which college course?”20. It would
appear this is what Hume, Thompson and Murdoch are indirectly referring to when they
16 Hume, A., made this comment in, BBC News, 14th August 2006, The Communications Revolution, mp3
download,
<http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/worldservice/documentaryarchive/documentaryar
chive_20060814-0805_40_st.mp3>
17 Thompson, M., made this comment in the above interview
18 Murdoch, R., 13th April 2005, Speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors,

News Corporation, <http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html>


19 Hume, E., 1996, The New Paradigm for News, p. 142
20 Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 13
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talk about the user having control over content, i.e. rather than the journalist, as was
previously the case. Hume says people would be forgiven for thinking the gatekeeper
role is in increasingly high demand, given “the torrent of news and pseudonews that is
flooding their homes thanks to new digital media technologies.” She puts the fact that
their role is declining – as she sees it – down to the differences between old and new
journalism (an idea which will be revisited later) 21.

In his book Media and Power, James Curran takes the role of journalist several steps
further. He argues that media texts take the form of “structured polysemy”, meaning
that readers are only able to interpret what they read within certain parameters22.
These are denoted by, first, variations in textual meaning, and second, their degree of
social access to ideas, meanings and discourses23. This is in opposition to the liberal
view that suggests a society free from such constraints, autonomous and able to make
sense of itself without reference to the media24.

These arguments are all impacted by the advent of Cable TV and the Internet, but in
different ways. This is where the themes of ‘choice’, ‘power’ and ‘freedom’ are shown to
be, if not the same thing, inextricably linked. Taking Curran’s argument, it follows that,
as society is limited in its interpretation of the written or spoken word, media itself is,
or rather was, constrained both economically and geographically, to a certain number of
papers and channels over a certain space. Cable TV suddenly meant hundreds rather
than four or five channels, but that was still limited compared the Internet. Its globalism
and intrinsic interactivity abolish all the limitations of newspapers and television,
economic, geographic and financial. If one accepts James Curran’s position, it sets its
users free from the parameters of media texts because – returning to the three themes –
it gives users a choice of what to consume, the freedom to choose it and the power to
create it themselves should they wish to. It turns his argument on its head, because
online the parameters are defined by the content, and not the other way round.
Furthermore, all of that content is generated by users, some of whom are journalists but
the majority of whom are not. Even if one does not accept his argument and is more
comfortable in the Hume or Beckett school of thought, the Internet still sweeps away

21 Hume, E., 1996, The New Paradigm for News, p. 142


22 Curran J., 2002, Media and Power, p. 120
23 Ibid.
24 Morley, D., in Curran, J., Ibid.
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the truism that journalists ‘make’ the newspaper and television news25; they were
where you got your news from, ergo, that was the news, whether it actually was or not.
This is clearly no longer the case.

Beckett argues the same point in a different way, stating that:

...People want more than just consumer journalism, important as that much-
belittled form is to individuals and families. They also seem to want more
opportunity to debate their world. And they also want a more varied and
informed level of commentary upon it.26

Old Media vs. New Media: The False Distinction

It seems safe to say that Adam Hume’s earlier assertion that power is shifting from the
broadcaster to the audience27 is a safe one. The liberal versus structural debate in
Curran’s book explores the extent of this change. However, as Philip E. Agre points out,
power is a multi-dimensional factor that needs careful attention:28

Even though the Internet’s architecture treats all hosts equally in qualitative
terms, little follows about the quantitative consequences of that equality, for the
simple reason that power in society depends on other factors besides the ability
to exchange data on a network.29

This is an obvious point that is easily overlooked amidst the excitement of a revolution.
A popular journalist or news organisation like the BBC will have more power and will
be more widely read online than the average citizen generating their own content.
Therefore, pre-existing power relations are not erased by the level playing field of the
Internet but are in fact replicated on it precisely because of that level playing field. This
debate about power is couched inside a wider debate about the extent of change that
balances out some of the arguments above.

25 Schudson, M., The Sociology of News Production Revisited (Again), in Mass Media and Society, edited by
Curran et al, p. 177
26 Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 13
27 See 10
28 Agre, P.E., 2002, The Internet and the Political Process, p. 4
29 Ibid.
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At the centre of this wider debate is the important point that, in terms of content, the
Internet, in and of itself, is nothing (hence the level playing field analogy). It is what
paper is to newspapers and the television set is to television; a facilitator. In that sense
it can work in harmony with the established players in news journalism, because it is
the content and not the form that matters. In the words of Martin Fewell, Deputy Editor
of Channel 4 News, “content is king”30. Hume agrees: “The new challenge for journalists
is not the medium but the message”31. This much is undoubtedly true. Paul DiMaggio et
al: “...The Internet supplements and compliments rather than replaces traditional
sources of political information”32; Rupert Murdoch: “There was no way to make
[television] a part, or even a partner, of the paper. That is manifestly not true of the
internet.”33

Without an appreciation for the difference between form and content, one can easily be
drawn into the ‘newspapers versus Internet’ argument. This is an asymmetrical
comparison that misses the point entirely. What the Internet threatens is the form of the
newspaper; in other words, reading it on paper. There is nothing inherent in the
Internet form that threatens content – as discussed, the reverse is true – which is why
newspapers have websites, often with replicated but sometimes entirely original
content34.

This is the ‘false distinction’ argument, and it is a widely held view. By their own
admission, the ‘Old Media’ have been slow to realise this. Rupert Murdoch cites several
reasons: they were not ready for such strong competition, population growth masked
the steady decline in readership, and profitability wasn’t affected.35 But as he added,
“those days are gone. The trends are against us.”36 By ‘us’, he means ‘Old Media’, which
is perhaps best defined in relation to ‘New Media’ by Beckett’s ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’
table (Fig. 1)37.

30 Martin Fewell, Deputy Editor, Channel 4 News, in Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 19
31 Hume, E., 1996, The New Paradigm for News, p. 152
32 DiMaggio, P., et al, 2001, Social Implications of the Internet, p. 320
33 Murdoch, R., 14th April 2005, Speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors,

News Corporation, <http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html>


34 Kuhn, R., 2007, Politics and the Media in Britain, p. 18-19
35 Murdoch, R., 2005, Speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, News

Corporation, <http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html>
36 Ibid.
37 Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 47
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Beckett and media commentator Jeff Jarvis


Old Media New Media
who wrote the Foreword to SuperMedia, Problems Solutions
Barriers to entry Permeable
take the argument further. Jarvis argues Unresponsive Interactive
that ‘new’ or ‘two-way’ media is the, Crude technology Infinite technology
Expensive Cheap
“natural state of media... The one-way Deadlines 24/7
Single platform Multiple platforms
nature of news media until now was Linear Multi-dimensional
merely a result of the limitations of FIG. 1

production and distribution.”38 Beckett’s to the crisis facing the industry is a description
of how two-way media operates. “‘Network Journalism’ takes into account the
collaborative nature of journalism now: professionals and amateurs working together
to get the real story, linking to each other across brands and old boundaries to share
facts, questions, answers, ideas, perspectives.”39 Beckett adds that, “it is also a way of
bridging the semantic divide between Old and New Media”.40

How the Internet Changes Everything

In the same way that Hampton argues above that newspapers have always enjoyed a
symbiotic relationship with television, Beckett, Jarvis and many others clearly believe
that the same is true of newspapers and the Internet. Brian McNair argues that the best
way for news organisations to deal with the Internet is, “by transforming the producers
of news from being either print or broadcast into multimedia organisations operating on
both ‘old’ and ‘new’ platforms”41. Therefore, the harmonious relationship is actually
facilitated, not prevented, by the Internet: “Increasingly, the Internet is turning the
media world into a symbiotic eco-system, in which the different parts feed off one
another and the whole thing grows.”42

This is where blogging fits into the picture, as one of those fed and feeding parts. It is
also where the central argument of this dissertation can be established, in almost direct
contrast to the third of three assertions made by Philip E. Agre. He would seemingly find
McNair’s position too Internet-centric, as he believes, “the Internet itself is only one

38 Jarvis, J., in Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. Viii


39 Ibid. p. 6
40 Beckett, C., p. 6
41 McNair, B., 2006, Cultural Chaos, p. 123
42 Ibid. pp. 128
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element of an ecology of media”, and that, “the main impact [of the Internet]... will be to
allow us to do more of the things we were already organized and oriented to do”,
because, “On its own, the Internet changes nothing.”43

Part of the central argument in this chapter is that, on its own, the Internet changes a
great deal. This runs in parallel with, not contrary to, previous assertions about it being
a facilitator and not a provider of content in itself. Certainly, on its own it provides no
content, but what makes it unique as a medium is that its content is entirely composed
of users’ contributions, be they journalists or otherwise. In print media and on
television, journalists ‘make’ the news44; on the Internet, anyone can. It is precisely
because the Internet offers no content of its own that it changes everything.

This is not to dismiss Agre’s argument about power. Clearly The Times’ website will
receive more interest than, for example, my blog, because people know of The Times,
and they trust it to provide them with good information. This dissertation is an
investigation into how that power balance has changed, and argues that it is possible,
via a blog, for an individual to gain the same kind of trust and be seen as a reliable
source for political journalism, to the extent that established news organisations look to
them for good information.

Chapters II and III will provide evidence of this and conduct an investigation into the
extent of the impact of political blogs on Westminster and the political journalism of
new media, i.e. both online and offline. In the meantime it should be noted that there are
voices that dissent from the ‘new media environment’ perspective. Amongst others,
Andrew Keen, John Lloyd, Markus Prior, Tony Blair and Nick Davies represent a wide
body of opinion that fear, inter alia, a decline in journalistic standards and the ‘monkeys’
taking over; what Andrew Keen calls, ‘The Cult of the Amateur’:

Old media is facing extinction... Say good-bye to today’s experts and cultural
gatekeepers – our reporters, news anchors, editors, music companies, and
Hollywood movie studios. In today’s cult of the amateur, the monkeys are

43Agre, P.E., 2002, The Internet and the Political Process, p. 6-7
44Schudson, M., The Sociology of News Production Revisited (Again), in Mass Media and Society, edited by
Curran et al, p. 177
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running the show. With their infinite typewriters they are authoring the future.
And we may not like how it reads.45

Markus Prior offers a more nuanced and robust critique of new media. He raises the
interesting point that television used to force people to watch the news46. In this “high
choice environment” we have fewer such “chance encounters” with news and political
information47. Coupled with the fact that people aren’t especially knowledgeable or
enthusiastic about politics48, this means they can make preference-based consumption
decisions and side-step the news, and become an intellectually segregated electorate as
a result49.

Tony Blair’s laments about the media’s focus on impact over accuracy are well-
documented50, and the second chapter of Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News looks at how the
Internet and the need for speed it has created removes time for fact-checking, resulting
in “churnalism”51.

Charlie Beckett’s counter-argument is that journalism has always faced questions about
its standards, and that such analysis is an essential part of it52. However, he doesn’t
entirely disagree with these arguments, which is why he thinks we have to change
journalism into Network Journalism in order for it to survive53.

It was not the purpose of this chapter to prove these people wrong. Rather it was to
establish that the symbiotic eco-system of new and old media is the status quo, and that
political blogging is a perfect example of the new relationship between the public and
the media. Plus there is a certain futility to any critique of the present situation, because
it is happening whether we like it or not. You cannot rebottle the genie. An interchange
between Mike Williams, maker of the BBC series The Communication Revolution, and Bill
Thompson, BBC technology analyst, encapsulates this:

45 Keen, A., 2007, in Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 30


46 Prior, M., 2005, News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political
Knowledge and Turnout, p. 577-578
47 Ibid.
48 Neuman, R., 1996, Political Communications Infrastructure, p. 14, and DiMaggio, P., et al, 2001, Social

Implications of the Internet, p. 319


49 Ibid.
50 Blair, T., 2007, in Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 28
51 Davies, N., 2008, Flat Earth News, p. 69
52 Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 27
53 Ibid., p. 27-33
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We are all producers; I think that’s the big shift.


Is that a good thing?
Who said anything about good or bad? We’re not making moral judgements here.
The technology makes it possible. It is happening.54

The Internet has put the choice, power and freedom to affect change in the new media
environment into the hands of the individual. The next chapter examines their weapon
of choice and the battlefield in which they utilise it; the blog and the blogosphere.

54Hume, A., 2006, in BBC News, 14th August 2006, The Communications Revolution, mp3 download,
<http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/worldservice/documentaryarchive/documentaryar
chive_20060814-0805_40_st.mp3>
P a g e | 15

CHAPTER II: BLOGS & THE


BLOGOSPHERE

This chapter gives an overview of the blog and blogosphere by defining them and
examining both their place in the new media environment and how they interact with
the ‘Old Media’ of Chapter I. This takes the form of statistical comparisons between blog
traffic and print media circulation, and an analysis of the role of the blogger juxtaposed
with that of the journalist in the new media environment. While most agree there is
consensus of purpose and a shared, often mutually beneficial experience, there are
dissenting voices in political journalism and Westminster. In assessing the impact of the
blog on these actors it is clear that, as in Chapter I, the correct unit of analysis is content
rather than form. Like the Internet, the blog is a platform that offers no content of its
own. The second part of the argument is that the relationship between blogs (of a
political nature) and political journalism is, in terms of information sharing, symbiotic
and co-operative rather than adversarial. The hypothesis is loosely established in
theory, and case studies to further examine it take place in Chapter III.

Definitions: ‘Blog’ and ‘Blogosphere’

“The leading blog search engine and most comprehensive source of information on the
blogosphere”55, Technorati, defines a blog as:

A Blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by
an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or
other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in
reverse-chronological order.56

55Technorati, [undated] Technorati: About Us, <http://technoratimedia.com>


56Technorati, 2008, State of the Blogosphere 2008, <http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-
blogosphere>
P a g e | 16

It defines the blogosphere as:

The Blogosphere is the collective community of all blogs. Since all blogs are on
the Internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially
networked. Discussions “in the Blogosphere” have been used by the media as a
gauge of public opinion on various issues.57

Some suggested “essentials” are more questionable. Hendrickson states that, “the
unedited voice of the person is the ‘essential element of Weblog writing’”, and,
“important defining characteristics include postings in reverse chronological order,
unfiltered content, a space for reader comments and the presence of hyperlinks to other
web content”58. Siapera adds that the blogger has absolute discretion over all aspects of
their site – content, layout, whether to include hyperlinks or comments – making the
concept difficult to define59. The potential pitfalls of making such assertions will be
addressed later. One feature often absent from such definitions is that of speed and/or
immediacy60. When inferring impact in Chapter III we will see that this is a crucial
idiosyncratic difference from the mainstream media, both in print and on television.

One certain hindrance to definition is the ever expanding size, and therefore variation,
of the blogosphere. Charlie Beckett puts it in no uncertain terms:

The figures in the West are stunning. The last time I checked, Technorati was
tracking around 100 million blogs. Some analysis suggests that 3 percent are
consciously about politics. I make that 2.4 million political editorial voices that
weren’t there before and those numbers are increasing all the time.

57 Ibid.
58 Tremayne, M. (editor), 2007, Press Protection in the Blogosphere, in Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future
of Media, p. 188-189
59 Siapera, E., 2008, The Political Subject of Blogs, p. 56
60 Hendrickson, L., in Tremayne, M., Ibid., refers to speed in the context of journalists’ objections to an

absence of checks, similar to Nick Davies’ “churnalism” theory. See 47


P a g e | 17

FIG. 2

At the time of writing, BlogPulse Live (also Charlie Beckett’s source) still has politics at
the 3% figure61 and claims to have ‘identified’ 104,779,827 blogs, 39,299 of them in the
last 24 hours62. To update Beckett’s 2008 figures that means approximately 3.14 million
blogs that are, as he put it, “consciously about politics” (see fig. 263). Technorati’s figures
are much higher, with one report stating that 184 million people have started a blog and
their readership numbers 346 million64. Of the topics blogged about they claim 35% to
be about politics (see fig. 2)65. Given the considerable difference in these figures it is
perhaps safest to fall back on Technorati’s own assertion that although estimates are
“widely disparate”, “all studies agree... that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit
the mainstream”66.

Furthermore, they have done so with incredible speed. Estimates in 1999 suggested
there were only 50 blogs in total, and in 2004 the highest estimates put the figure at 2.4
million67.

61 BlogPulse, 16th March 2009, BlogPulse Live, <http://www.blogpulse.com/bplive_full.html>


62Ibid., BlogPulse Stats, <http://www.blogpulse.com/index.html>
63 Technorati, 2008, State of the Blogosphere, <http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere>
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid. 2008, The What and Why of Blogging, <http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-

blogosphere/the-what-and-why-of-blogging/>
66 Ibid. 2008, State of the Blogosphere, Ibid.
67 Drezner, D.W., and Farrell, H., 2004, Web of Influence, p. 33
P a g e | 18

The British Political Blogosphere

These figures, whilst useful for an overview, are difficult to meaningfully comprehend
and too broad for our purposes. For a more realistic and relevant sense of scale we can
zoom in on British political blogs using political lifestyle magazine Total Politics’ blog
directory. It lists 1,954 blogs (and counting) in its database68, which is 100 more than
last year69. Its annual guide to British political blogging delves deeper and offers some
key facts that help paint a more complete picture. For example, there are more left of
centre blogs than right, but the right is dominant in the rankings; Tom Harris MP was
the only MP to begin blogging in 2008; of the top 100 blogs of 2008 (as voted for by
bloggers), 44 were not in the top 100 of 2007; All the main blogs experienced a
continuing rise in readers.70

There are various potential ways of examining the blog’s place and role within the new
media environment. To assess level of readership and, by extension, potential influence,
comparisons can be made between the traffic to some of the more widely read blogs
and circulation figures for print media. Having established their statistical standing, the
arguments for and against their influence are considered.

‘Stat Porn’ – Circulation vs. Unique Visitors/Visits

All comparisons of this nature are useful estimates only, as they are intrinsically
imprecise. This is because it is impossible to tell the exact number of individuals that
have visited a website or read a newspaper (although the methodology for the latter is
far more refined and accurate). Some of the technical detail will be discussed later, but
for the purposes of comparing circulation data with website traffic I have used the same
method as the Audit Bureau of Circulations as they are the industry standard. They take
the total average net circulation (of a newspaper) per issue per month and compare it
with the total number of unique users per month (of the newspaper’s website)71 and

68 Total Politics, 2009, Political Blogs: The UK’s Political Blog Directory,
<http://www.totalpolitics.com/politicalblogs>
69 Dale, I., 2007, Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging in the UK, p. 6
70 Ibid., p. 9-15
71 ABCe, January 2009, Multi-Platform Monthly Report, <http://www.abce.org.uk/cgi-

bin/gen5?runprog=abce/abce&noc=y>, p. 2
P a g e | 19

publish the results in their monthly Multi-Platform reports72. I have replaced the
newspaper’s website figures with those for one particular blog.

Newspaper Circulation Data vs. Guido


Fawkes' website traffic
Average net circulation per issue/absolute

700,000
600,000
unique visitors/visits

500,000
The Times
400,000 The Guardian
300,000 The Independent
200,000 Guido Fawkes Unique Visitors
Guido Fawkes Visits
100,000
0
Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Jan-09

The blog used in the graph belongs to Paul Staines, who blogs under the pseudonym and
character “Guido Fawkes” (a reference to “the only man to enter parliament with honest
intentions”73). The reason for the inclusion of two categories of data – unique visitors
and visits – is down to the fact that the former underestimates his true readership and
the latter overstates it (a detailed explanation of this can be found in the introduction).
Two further things should also be noted: First, circulation figures are not readership
figures, but they are publicly available, which readership figures are not. Secondly these
are not three of the best selling British daily newspapers; they were chosen because of
the similarity of their figures in relation to both sets of Guido’s.

His blog is central to this investigation because it is the most widely-read, influential
and popular political blog in Britain. Evidence for this abounds in the form of accolades:
The Economist ranked him top of the British political blogosphere in 200874; Editorial
Intelligence cited him as the third most influential blogger on British public policy and

72 ABCe, January 2008-9, Multi-Platform Reports,


<http://www.abce.org.uk/cgi-bin/gen5?runprog=abce/abce&noc=y>
73 Staines P., Guido Fawkes’ blog, January 2004, About Guido’s blog,

<http://www.order-order.com/2004/01/about-guidos-blog/>
74 The Economist, 17th April 2008, Semi-connected: British politics is missing out on the potential of new

media, <http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11053170>
P a g e | 20

opinion75; industry monitor Hitwise listed his as Britain’s 6th most popular blog in all
categories in 200876; The Guardian placed him 79th most powerful media figure in the
world77 and 7th most powerful digital media industry player in the world in 2008, just
below Joanna Shields, Executive Vice-President of AOL and two places above Emily Bell,
Director of Digital Content at Guardian News & Media78. Given the transient nature of
such accolades it is worth pointing out that The Economist made their above claim on
the basis of his ranking at 6,449th most popular website in Britain, which now, less than
a year later, stands at 2,55179.

The main purpose of citing these figures is to demonstrate that the number of people
reading Guido’s every word is broadly comparable to the number of people reading The
Independent, The Times and the Guardian. Not only are their ‘circulation’ figures
comparable, but Guido’s total unique visitors figure for 2008 was 85.8% higher than in
2007, and 1,775.34% larger than in 200580. As Guido asks, “How many publishers can
say that?”81

The argument is not that he is more influential than these or any other newspapers, or
that his success is representative of the British political blogosphere as a whole. It is
that these figures support the overall hypothesis; the blog grants to each blogger the
potential to achieve a level of influence that enables them to affect change in the arenas
of political journalism and Westminster. However, such a hypothesis requires more
than statistical analysis. The medium of the blog is the crucial facilitator of this change,
but it is nothing without a readership, and attracting them requires there to be
something worth reading.

75 Staines, P., Guido Fawkes’ blog, May 2008, The Blog You Love, They Hate,
<http://www.order-order.com/2008/05/blog-you-love-they-hate.html>
76 Goad, R., 10th June 2008, Blog traffic reaches all time high,

<http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2008/06/uk_blog_traffic_reaches_all_time_high.html>
77 Guardian, 14th July 2008, The Media 100 2008,

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/14/mediatop100200875>
78 Kiss, J., 2008, The Media 100 2008: Top ten in digital media,

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/page/top10digital2008>
79 Alexa, 2009, Order-order.com – Guido Fawkes’ blog,

<http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/order-order.com>
80 Staines, P., 1st January 2009, Guido Fawkes’ blog, 2008 Stat-Porn Summary,

<http://www.order-order.com/2009/01/2008-stat-porn-summary>
81 Ibid.
P a g e | 21

Content

Obviously Paul Staines is one blogger amongst millions and one British political blogger
amongst thousands. His ‘Stat-Porn’ as he justifiably calls it, has been singled out above
as one way of demonstrating the potential offered by the blog platform. But such
success depends on the content displayed on that platform. Drezner describes the
heterarchical and hierarchical duality of the blogosphere:

...The most reliable way to gain Web traffic is through a link on another weblog. A
blog that is linked to by multiple other sites will accumulate an ever increasing
readership... Thus... the rich (measured in the number of links) get richer, while
the poor remain poor.82

Notwithstanding the latter statement, the heterarchical nature of the blogosphere is, as
Drezner says, created and perpetuated through links to other blogs. Indeed it is a source
of competition in itself. Total Politics publishes the Top 100 Wikio Blogs in its annual
Guide to Political Blogging, in which, “ranking depends on the number and weight of the
incoming links from other blogs... The weight of a link depends on the linking blog’s
position in the Wikio ranking”. This is a particularly literal example of the “self-
perpetuating, symbiotic relationship” that Drezner is refers to83. Equally his reference to
a rich/poor divide is echoed by Iain Dale – publisher, pundit, former Conservative Party
candidate and leading political blogger – who points out that:

Guido Fawkes became the first blogger to reach 100,000 absolute unique visitors
in any one month, with my blog reaching 70,000. But you don’t have to go much
further down the Top 10 to find blogs which struggle to reach 20,000.84

Going to the very bottom of Total Politics’ Top 200 blogs for a sense of relativity and
scale, The Exile blog reports to have attracted at least 5,000 unique visitors in October
200885. Putting aside the fact that several thousand unique monthly visitors is arguably
a large number for an unknown individual, these points support Martin Fewell’s

82 Drezner, D.W., and Farrell, H., 2004, Web of Influence, p. 35


83 Ibid.
84 Dale, I., 2007, Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging in the UK, p. 16
85 The Exile, 20th October 2008, The strange world of Tamar and their blog advertising,

<http://www.the-exile.info/2008/10/strange-world-of-tamar-and-their-blog.html>
P a g e | 22

assertion in Chapter I that “Content is king” 86. In other words, just having a blog is not
enough. Paul Staines repeated the same mantra as Fewell when I interviewed him, but
added that “time, money and ability”87 are necessary to generate that content. By this he
means having the ability to write, and to write about politics88. (Time and money are
comparatively self-explanatory, in that time costs money.) He cites these three factors as
the reason behind his success and that of two of his close rivals, Iain Dale and Tim
Montgomerie, adding that, while there are no barriers to entry in the blogosphere, there
are “huge barriers to success”89. This approach will be explored further in due course.

Old Media vs. New Media: The False Distinction (Again)

Having time, money and ability to generate content that people will want to read sounds
remarkably like the job description of a journalist. As far as Staines is concerned he is “a
campaigning journalist who publishes via a blog”90, but others beg to differ, both about
themselves and Staines. Iain Dale doesn’t seem to consider himself to be a journalist,
partly because his blog subjects are a mixture of the personal and political91, but also
because of the way in which he talks about journalists and his role as a “monitor”:

The people who monitor people like him [Mirror journalist Stephen Moyes] are
people like me in the new media, who have the power now to have a voice. 10
years ago we would never have had that, but if we see a journalist doing
something wrong... and we know about that, we can expose them on the internet,
and they absolutely hate it.92

There are major disagreements surrounding both the actions of such bloggers and
whether or not they a “good thing” in terms of their impact on political journalism and
on healthy political debate. Their role is described in the literature as, inter alia,

86 See 26
87 Staines, P., 16th March 2009, Interview
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
90 Staines P., January 2004, Guido Fawkes’ blog, About Guido’s blog,

<http://www.order-order.com/2004/01/about-guidos-blog/>
91 Dale, I., 9th February 2009, Email Interview
92 Dale, I., 2nd December 2008, Press TV Programs: Politics, Sex & the City: All Victims of Media Spin?, online

video, <http://www.presstv.com/Programs/player/?id=77334>
P a g e | 23

“conduits...news digests”93, media fact-checkers94, and the blogosphere as a,


“repositor[y] of expertise... a barometer for whether a story would or should receive
greater coverage by the mainstream media”95. It has also been described as a
“cacophony”96, corrosively cynical97, guilty of banal nihilism98 and, “Like the Ku Klux
Klan, like the Nazi Party”99. Polly Toynbee, the most influential columnist in the UK100,
outlined her opposition in a speech entitled, The Art of the Column:

People say: “What's the difference between a blog and column anyway? Isn't
MySpace just as good as the Guardian comment pages?” I think not. There is a
skill in crafting a column with a beginning, a middle and an end, a coherent
argument and at least three facts readers don't know, preferably information
gleaned from talking to the leading players in the case.101

Her concerns seem to rest on an absence of skill, but at the same time she acknowledges
the influence of the blogosphere by stating that it is affecting online discourse. Iain Dale
shared some of her other concerns about online abuse but adds that,

I have never seen my blog as attempting to compete with a newspaper column...


Yes, we can write quickly and get a piece published more quickly than she can,
but she has a massive platform in a national newspaper.102

It is perhaps not the competition side that Toynbee is concerned with but the
blogosphere’s ability to be the oxygen for any questions regarding the accuracy or

93 Tremayne, M. (editor), L., 2007, Press Protection in the Blogosphere, in Blogging, Citizenship, and the
Future of Media, p. 189
94 Drezner, D.W., 2004, Web of Influence, p. 38
95 Ibid. p. 36-7
96 Fealty, M., 24th February 2007, Guardian: comment is free, The wisdom of crowds,

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/24/towardsadeliberativedemocra>
97 BBC News, 5th November 2008, Blears attacks political bloggers,

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7711562.stm>
98 Lovink, G., 27th March 2006, Eurozine, Blogging, the nihilist impulse,

<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-01-02-lovink-en.html>
99 Owens, S., 30th July 2007, Bloggasm, online video, Bill O’Reilly compares blogosphere to Nazis and the

KKK, <http://bloggasm.com/bill-oreilly-compares-blogosphere-to-nazis-and-the-kkk>
100 Editorial Intelligence, 13th April 2008, Polly Toynbee voted UK’s ‘most influential’ Commentator,

<http://www.editorialintelligence.com/ei-news/article.php?d=080413>
101 Press Gazette, 9th February 2007, Polly Toynbee on bloggers: I have around 50 arch enemies,

<http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=36740>
102 Dale, I., Iain Dale’s Diary, 3rd February 2007, Polly is wrong...But she has a point,

<http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2007/02/polly-is-wrongbut-she-has-point.html>
P a g e | 24

validity of her columns. Given this quote from Iain Dale, who reached 70,000 unique
visitors in one month during 2008103, this would be justified:

Ask Polly Toynbee in the Guardian what she thinks about people like me, who
write about her columns and dissect them line by line, and work out all the lies
that people like her tell every week.104

The truthfulness of her column aside, it is the blog that gives Iain Dale the chance to do
this. Some would argue that this has a deleterious effect on the level of debate.

Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, gave a speech
on tackling political disengagement that included her views on the impact of the
political blogosphere:

But mostly, political blogs are written by people with a disdain for the political
system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals,
conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy. Unless and until political blogging adds
value to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and
legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics
in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of
cynicism and despair105.

Toynbee and Blears’ analyses betray several fundamental misunderstandings that


undermine the rest of their arguments. First, Toynbee’s comparison of the blog and the
column is asymmetrical; after all, a column can be written on a blog. Her mistake is the
same as Hendrickson’s and Siapera’s above106, in that they impose their view of the
typical blogger onto the form of the blog. Just as the argument in Chapter I asserted that
the Internet is not a threat to but a partner of print media because it offers no content,
exactly the same is true here. Clearly whether or not the blogger can write depends on
the writer, not the blog as a medium. Secondly, Blears suggests that the blogosphere

103 Dale, I., 2007, Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging in the UK, p. 18
104 Dale, I., 2nd December 2008, Press TV Programs: Politics, Sex & the City: All Victims of Media Spin?, online
video, <http://www.presstv.com/Programs/player/?id=77334>
105 Wardman, M., 6th November 2008, The Wardman Wire, Hazel Blears’ talk to the Hansard Society about

Political Engagement: Here is the text, <http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2008/11/06/hazel-blears-


talk-to-the-hansard-society-about-political-engagement-here-is-the-text/>
106 See 54-5
P a g e | 25

somehow disallows certain types of newcomer, a notion to which Mike Fealty responds,
echoing Drezner above107:

...This is... to miss a significant dynamic within the blog ecosystem. Unlike a
courtroom, where expert witnesses have to establish their credibility first,
bloggers prosper or decline each day on the quality of their output, and in their
capacity to instigate and pursue good, open ended and challenging
conversations.

This is really a direct continuation of the ‘False Distinction’ argument made by Charlie
Beckett, Paul DiMaggio, Rupert Murdoch and Ellen Hume outlined in Chapter I. In the
same way that newspaper editors mistook the Internet for something inherently
threatening, Polly Toynbee and Hazel Blears, whose views are representative of political
journalism and Westminster to some degree at least, appear to have mistaken the blog
in the same way. Although it may seem so at first, this is more than a semantic issue. I
think it is fair to assume they would counter this argument by saying their remarks
were directed at people outside of the mainstream media and not, for example, at Nick
Robinson’s or Robert Peston’s blogs, but this in itself betrays their even greater
misconception. They perceive a difference between, for example, Nick Robinson and
Iain Dale simply by virtue of the fact that the former is part of the mainstream media.

This is not to deny that blogging is a “distinct discipline”108, and that they are often
written in a more informal style than a traditional column109, as Polly Toynbee implied.
But the assumption that blogs are solely an attack tool for the embittered amateur is to
both blur the line between form and content and ignore the reality of the new media
environment.

In that environment there is no divide between professional journalists and “amateur”


bloggers, not least because there are journalists who blog and bloggers who make a
living out of it110. Not only do bloggers share information with each other and the press,

107 See 74
108 Linford, P., 2008, Total Politics: Guide to Political Blogging in the UK, p. 51, where he also makes the
interesting claim that James Forsyth of the Spectator is a better blogger than columnist
109 Tremayne, M. (editor), 2007, Press Protection in the Blogosphere, in Blogging, Citizenship, and the

Future of Media, p. 189


110 Linford, P., 2008, Total Politics, p. 51
P a g e | 26

amplifying and co-operating on stories111, they also share their staff. Iain Dale until
recently had a column in The Telegraph and in August 2008 Jonathan Isaby moved from
The Telegraph to work for ConservativeHome.com112. The result of this symbiosis is that
the ‘elite’ of the British blogosphere consist of the “’Big Four’ independent blogs – Iain
Dale, Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome and Political Betting – and the leading MSM
blogs – [Spectator] Coffee House, Red Box, [Ben] Brogan, [Nick] Robinson”113. As Beckett
says, “[Blogs] are no threat to mainstream news because they supplement and enhance
mainstream journalism”114. It is no coincidence therefore, that the BBC, News
International, Associated Newspapers Ltd and Guardian Unlimited are all amongst the
top ten visitors to Guido Fawkes’ blog115.

Further proof of media convergence lies in the fact that the vast majority of, if not all,
news organisations’ individual newspapers have their own website. Their very
existence is a perfect example of the symbiosis of old and new. Much of their online and
offline content is the same and many established political journalists have blogs within
those websites. As discussed, the best of those are required reading in the blogosphere
just as Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale are for Nick Robinson, Ben Brogan. Although unique
visitor statistics for the mainstream media blogs, Daniel Finkelstein wrote in his New
Statesmen column (published on- and offline):

Iain Dale’s very popular blog, or the witty Guido Fawkes site...are able to get very
similar audience figures to (plucking a random example out of the air) my own
Comment Central blog on the Times site. And the impact that the Guido site, in
particular, has made on the political debate has been significant.116

The details and extent of this impact are examined in Chapter III.

111 Harris, T., MP., 12st January 2009, Email Interview; This exact point is also made in Tremayne, M., Ibid.,
p. 106
112 Montgomerie, T., 1st August 2008, Jonathan Isaby to join ConservativeHome from The Telegraph,

<http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2008/08/jonathan-isaby.html>
113 Linford, P., p. 53
114 Beckett, C., 21st January 2009, Email interview
115 Staines, P., 24th September 2008, Who Reads Guido?,

<http://www.order-order.com/2008/09/who-reads-guido/>
116 Finkelstein, D., 19th March 2009, New Statesman, Come down, check it out,

<http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/03/mass-media-party-internet>
P a g e | 27

Conclusion

What has been established is that any attempt to characterise the political blogosphere
as divided between professionals and amateurs or journalists and bloggers is unhelpful
and inaccurate, both for analysis and argument. In adopting this position one is forced
to create false categories and criteria that both ‘types’ of blog must adhere to in order
that they may be labelled ‘amateur’ or ‘professional’. Beckett said in 2008, “As
journalism goes online I think that distinction becomes increasingly blurred.” My
argument here is that it is non-existent. The reality is that the size and pace of change of
and in the blogosphere renders any such characterisation instantly unfounded. In this
sense the two parts to the central argument of this chapter, as outlined in the abstract,
are in fact one. Because the blog is a platform without inherent content, the division
between amateur bloggers and blogging professional journalists is false. The real unit of
analysis is simply the blog as a static tool, and its inherent features are what unite the
blogosphere.

The hypothesis is therefore correct in theory, but it needs updating. It makes no


mention of the fact that, in order to have an impact, a blog needs a readership, for which
in turn it requires attractive content. This is Paul Staines’ point about no barriers to
entry but huge barriers to success. The main barrier is in fact the blogosphere itself. Its
enormous size and self-perpetuating hierarchy mean that success requires readable
content over everything else. The vast number of blogs and the tiny number that
comprise the elite demonstrate that readable content does indeed depend upon the
blogger’s time, money and ability. Armed with these tools, the individual can use their
blog to create impact and affect change.

Updated Hypothesis

The updated hypotheses is that the platform of the blog, as a part of and facilitated by
the Internet, enables individuals outside of the mainstream media, with time, money
and ability at their disposal, to impact upon and affect those within the arena of political
journalism and Westminster.
P a g e | 28

CHAPTER III: CASE STUDIES

Almost since its inception the blogosphere has been demonstrating its ability to affect
the news agenda. Salam Pax, a.k.a. the “Baghdad Blogger”, whose readership grew to
millions after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, had his posts quoted by the New York Times,
BBC, and the Guardian117. He was the most famous of many bloggers who provided
invaluable news reporting from the very centre of the story. Drezner makes an
interesting comparison: “If the first Gulf War introduced the world to the ‘CNN effect’,
then the second Gulf War was blogging’s coming out party.”118

In November 2008 Burmese blogger Nay Myo Kyaw was sentenced to 20 years and 6
months in jail for attacking Burma’s dictator in the form of a love poem119, and on 19th
March 2009 the BBC reported that Omid Mirsayafi, a blogger jailed for insulting Iran’s
ruling clerics, had died in prison120.

The most extreme political example of the blogosphere’s impact happened to be one of
the earliest: the Drudge Report, the inspiration behind Guido Fawkes’ blog, was the first
media outlet to report President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky121. Although
more of a news aggregator than a blogger, Matt Drudge does occasionally author stories
and is, like Guido, an individual outside of the mainstream media given the power to
publish by the Internet, in that instance with profound consequences.

Returning to the confines of Westminster, and in a similar case study to this one, in
SuperMedia, Charlie Beckett charters Guido Fawkes’ involvement in the downfall of John
Prescott following his various affairs in 2006. He describes it as “the moment when
blogs had officially arrived in British political journalism”122. In a sense the first case
study below is confirmation of the blog’s arrival. It concerns the more recent scandal

117 Drezner, D., 2004, Web of Influence, p. 32


118 Ibid.
119 Parry, R.L., 12th November 2008, Times Online, Burma activists sentenced to 65 years each in draconian

crackdown, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5129509.ece>
120 BBC News, 19th March 2009, Iran blogger dies in Evin prison,

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7953738.stm>
121 BBC News, 25th January 1998, Scandalous scoop breaks online,

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/clinton_scandal/50031.stm>
122 Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 106
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involving, amongst many others, Peter Hain, at the time Secretary of State for Work and
Pensions. Unlike John Prescott he ended up crediting Guido Fawkes with his downfall.

Case Study I: Peter Hain’s Resignation

As with most political scandals, “the details of this case study are complex and much is
still lost in the mists of denial and innuendo”123. Nevertheless, it will examine the impact
of political blogosphere on the ‘Donorgate’ scandal, with Guido Fawkes in the starring
role. On January 29th 2007 Guido revealed Peter Hain’s campaign strategy for the race to
become Deputy Prime Minister. On May 4th 2007, he revealed Mr Hain’s campaign’s
expenditure summary. Neither meant a huge amount at the time, but here these are
identified as the root of Peter Hain’s downfall.

On January 24th 2008 Peter Hain resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary after the
Metropolitan police announced they were investigating his failure to declare in excess
of £100,000 in donations to his bid to become Deputy Leader of the Labour Party124. The
case was referred to the police by the Electoral Commission, whose investigation was
sparked by a complaint from David Davies MP which referred to an article in the
Guardian published 8th January 2008125. The Commission was already aware of some
undeclared donations after Peter Hain informed them via email on 30th November and
5th December 2007, latterly apologising and stating there were in fact a number of
undeclared donations and that he would provide the Commission with these126. He did
so on 10th January, two days after the Guardian’s front page reported the undeclared
donations ran into tens of thousands127. The final figure presented to the Commission
was £103,156.75128.

123 Beckett, C., 2008, SuperMedia, p. 103


124 BBC News, 24th January 2008, Hain quits jobs ‘to clear name’,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7206812.stm>
125 House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges, 20 th January 2009, Mr Peter Hain,

<http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmstnprv/183/183.pdf>, p. 8
126 Ibid.
127 Sparrow, A., 24th January 2008, Guardian, Peter Hain resigns after donations row referred to police,

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jan/24/partyfunding.uk>
128 BBC News, 10th January 2008, Hain reveals £103k not declared,

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7180961.stm>
P a g e | 30

The donation reported on 30th November came from Jon Mendelsohn, formerly Gordon
Brown’s chief fundraiser129. He was concurrently involved in the David Abrahams proxy
donations scandal in which the latter donated in excess of half a million pounds using
the identities of various acquaintances, thus breaking electoral law. There was much
speculation as to whether Abrahams was behind Mendelsohn’s donation to Peter Hain,
as it was known he had donated exactly the same amount of money to Hillary Benn’s
and Harriet Harman’s Deputy Leadership campaigns, but this remained
unsubstantiated130. However, it was the police investigation into Abrahams’ donations
that necessitated Mendelsohn’s admission about his undeclared donation to Peter Hain,
which in turn uncovered another £98,156.75 and led to Hain’s resignation.

The Blogosphere’s Impact

A Google News advance archive search reveals that the first reports of Mendelsohn’s
undeclared donation came from the International Herald Tribune, via Associated Press,
on 29th November131. Several weeks prior to this, shortly after ‘Donorgate’ entered the
news, Guido Fawkes received a phone call from a source “who seemed to be intimately
familiar with Tory fundraising processes”132. The source claimed:

It was inconceivable... that if Labour were following procedures they would be


unaware of Abrahams. Labour were simply not doing this checking [of their
donor’s sources] and Guido should get on to the Electoral Commission to
discover how many donations Labour returned in comparison to the
Conservatives. Not enough it now seems. [Guido’s emphasis.]133

When the news broke of Mendelsohn’s donation, no doubt with the above phone call in
mind, Guido began to investigate Peter Hain’s campaign. He telephoned his fundraiser,
Huw Roberts, on December 3rd, who admitted there was a problem with the

129 BBC News, 3rd December 2007, Hain admits more donations errors,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7125770.stm>
130 Ibid.
131 International Herald Tribune, 29 th November 2007, Britain’s Electoral Commission refers Labour Party

campaign funding case to police,


<http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/29/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Labour-Party.php>
132 Staines, P., 19th December 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, Failure to Follow-Up,

<http://www.order-order.com/2007/12/failure-to-follow-up/>
133 Ibid.
P a g e | 31

donations134. The use of ‘donations’ plural was important, as only one was known about
at this stage. The timing of these events is also worth noting. Guido made his first phone
call to Huw Roberts at 12:57, which was returned at 15:30135. Peter Hain released a
statement about his visit to the Commission in time for the 6 o’clock news, and the BBC
reported it on their website at 22:24 that evening136. Google News archive shows no
fewer than twenty replications of this story on the websites of mainstream media
between 3rd and 7th December, but then only four for the rest of the month137.

In the meantime though, Guido kept up the pressure by exclusively revealing that Hain’s
own campaign documents, obtained and uploaded by Guido six months ago, before any
scandals broke, show he defrauded his own party, as they require 15% of all funds
raised to go to them (and he had not declared all the funds raised)138.

On December 20th Sky News’ Joey Jones and Guido Fawkes both noted it was taking
some time for Peter Hain to present the list of undeclared donations to the Electoral
Commission. Joey Jones suspected Mr Hain may be trying to use the holiday period to
quieten the announcement, and “Guido has his own suspicions”139. The Electoral
Commission’s report states that, although he registered a donation from a Mr Bill
Bottriell on December 18th, Mr Hain’s undeclared donations list “was not yet ready, but
would be sent as soon as it was”140. On January 7th Guido blogged at 13:08 to say Peter
Hain still hasn’t declared the donations, despite being able to register Mr Bottriell’s, and
later that evening George Parker at the Financial Times wrote a longer version of the
same story (“re-hashed”, in Guido’s opinion), but with prior knowledge of the
Guardian’s forthcoming front page141.

134 Staines, P. 3rd December 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, Hain Fundraiser: “Small problem with donations”,
<http://www.order-order.com/2007/12/hain-fundraiser-small-problem-with/>
135 Ibid.
136 BBC News, 3rd December 2007, Hain admits more donations errors,

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7125770.stm>
137 Google Advanced News Archive Search, 2009,

<http://news.google.co.uk/archivesearch/advanced_search?ned=uk&hl=en>
138 Staines, P., 4th December 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, Exclusive : Hain Cheated the Labour Party as well,

<http://www.order-order.com/2007/12/hain-cheated-labour-party-as-well/>
139 Staines, P., 20th December 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, Hain’s Suspiciously Slow Declaration,

<http://www.order-order.com/2007/12/hains-suspiciously-slow-declaration/>
140 House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges, Ibid.
141 Staines, P., 7th January 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, Electoral Commission “Still in Contact with Mr Hain’s

Office”, <http://www.order-order.com/2008/01/electoral-commission-still-in-contact/>
P a g e | 32

Between 8th and 17th January Guido posted updates


and fresh allegations about Peter Hain every single
day, usually twice a day, often more142. The
allegations ranged from questionable corporate
endorsements to the creation of a slush fund
disguised as a think tank called the Progressive
Policies Forum, which received money from, inter
alia, Isaac Kaye, former supporter of South Africa’s
National Party and no stranger to controversy
(particularly extraordinary given Peter Hain’s reputation as an anti-apartheid
veteran)143. The think tank story was broken online by Channel 4144, amplified by Guido
and embellished by the BBC. They reported that more than £50,000 had been laundered
through the PPF, half of which came from a diamond dealer who had made the donation
on the promise that it would be kept private145; a promise that, if upheld, broke the law.
BBC Wales’ political editor, Betsan Powys, wrote on her blog that it wasn’t even clear
donors to the PPF knew what their money was being used for146.

By this stage the left wing blogosphere, in particular LabourHome, was calling for his
resignation, as were members of his own campaign team according to The Sunday
Times, and the Cabinet’s silence was deafening; Guido collated the most salient quotes
and posted them on January 13th147.

His resignation on 24th January had almost become a formality, but the further eleven
stories published by Guido between 14th and 24th January, replete with fresh allegations
and substantiating evidence, certainly won’t have helped.

142 Staines, P., 8th – 17th January 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, <http://www.order-order.com/tag/peter-
hain/page/3> - these posts appear over three pages; replace ‘3’ with ‘4’ or ‘5’
143 Staines, P., January 12th 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, <http://www.order-order.com/2008/01/hain-

cover-up-not-absurd-idea/>
144 Channel 4 News, 11th January 2007, FactCheck: Is Hain’s ‘think tank’ for real?,

<http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/factcheck%20is%20hains%20thi
nk%20tank%20for%20real/1315847>
145 BBC News, 12th January 2007, Hain under fire over think tank,

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7184528.stm>
146 Powys, B., 12th January 2008, Betsan’s blog, Not for jumping,

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/betsanpowys/2008/01/not_for_jumping.html
147 Staines, P., 13th January 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, Labour rank and file disown Hain,

<http://www.order-order.com/2008/01/labour-rank-and-file-disown-hain/>
P a g e | 33

This is a clear example of the symbiosis of new media and Charlie Beckett’s ‘Network
Journalism’ in action. But, arguably Guido’s impact is greater still. The Electoral
Commission’s findings state:

6. The Commissioner has accepted Mr Hain’s assessment that a change of


personnel in his campaign team was an important factor in his failure to register
donations to the campaign between May and November 2007 (the campaign
ended on 24 June). Another important factor was the disbandment of the
campaign team while donations were still coming in, and before the large debts
that were incurred during the campaign had come to light148.

There is a strong case in suggesting that the change of personnel and disbandment of
the campaign team were down to Guido Fawkes. The wife of a “well connected” Special
Adviser claims, according to Guido149, that by revealing Hain’s campaign strategy
(January 2007) and his campaign budget (May 2007), he derailed the campaign, and:

...set in course a chain of events that led eventually to a few small shortfalls
becoming public knowledge on the front pages. The small matter, for instance, of
£103,000 in hidden campaign donations now under investigation by the
police.150

The toxicity of these documents for the campaign was not immediately obvious, but
they revealed something crucial. The total campaign budget was £88,904, but Mr Hain
had only registered £82,000 worth of donations on the Electoral Commission’s
website151. When the David Abrahams scandal erupted and Guido discovered Jon
Mendelsohn was involved, the link was made and the investigation started. Peter Hain
even credited Guido himself:

148 House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges, Ibid. p. 4


149 Staines, P., November 30th 2007, Guido Fawkes’ blog, Is Harman Trying the, “If I Go, You Go Too”
Defence?, <http://www.order-order.com/2007/11/is-harman-trying-if-i-go-you-go-too/>
150 Staines, P., April 17th 2008, Guido Fawkes’ blog, Setting the Story Straight on Hain’s “Surreal” Conspiracy

Theory, <http://www.order-order.com/2008/04/setting-story-straight-on-hains-surreal/>
151 Parker, G., January 7th 2008, FT.com, Hain still in breach of donation rules,

<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d54b3ec-bd52-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1>
P a g e | 34

Someone has persistently been sending material designed to discredit me to the


right wing Guido Fawkes website... My campaign failed and as a result of this
scapegoating and these dirty tricks, I have lost my Cabinet job. The whole thing is
a surreal nightmare and I don’t know what is behind it.152

In the same way that it is impossible to separate New from Old Media, it is impossible to
disseminate, categorise and label who said what before whom and where in a story like
this. In fact it is precisely because of the symbiosis between the mainstream media and
bloggers like Guido that establishing direct causation is so difficult. However, this case
study has been selected because of the particularly strong case for causality between
Guido Fawkes’ investigative journalism and publication of leaked documents, and the
resignation of a Cabinet Minister.

Case Study II: Tom Harris MP: Spending More Time With His Blog

On October 3rd 2008 junior Transport Minister Tom Harris MP wrote on his blog, called
And Another Thing...:

OKAY, I admit that was a bit of a shock to the system. GB called five minutes ago
and the bottom line is... hello again, back bench! More later, once I’ve had chance
to ruminate.153

In so doing he became the first MP to announce they had been sacked on a blog154. He
was no longer a junior Transport Minister as a result of a Cabinet reshuffle, a fate
familiar to MPs past and present and as such, not much of a story on its own. Almost
immediately, however, speculation was rife that he had been sacked as a result of the

152 Shipton, M., April 17th 2008, WalesOnline.co.uk, Peter Hain fury at ‘dirty tricks’,
<http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/04/17/peter-hain-fury-at-dirty-tricks-
vendetta-91466-20776216/>
153 Harris, T., 3rd October 2008, And another thing..., The call,

<http://www.tomharris.org.uk/2008/10/03/the-call/>
154 The Independent on Sunday, 5th October 2008, Brown wields axe after Mandelson’s return,

<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brown-wields-axe-after-mandelsons-return-
951813.html>
P a g e | 35

candid nature of his blog. Iain Dale said the decision had come to him as a shock, and
added:

He doesn't say if the Prime Minister gave a reason for his dismissal, but there has
indeed been a perception that his blog has, on the odd occasion, strayed over the
edge.155

On October 4th, LabourHome blogged:

How come Tom Harris, perhaps the only minister who wrote with us, the plebs,
in LabourHome in recent times, is sacked?156

He was interviewed by Mark D’Arcy a week later on Radio 4 whereupon he revealed his
surprise at being sacked and that had he had in fact been expecting a promotion157.
When asked what he thought was behind Gordon Brown’s decision he suggested that
blogging MPs have to be disciplined but he had never veered away from government
policy on his blog158. As such he did not believe it to have been a contributory factor, but
added that, given he had no idea what the reason behind his dismissal had been, it was
as good a theory as any other159. However, when I interviewed him in January 2009 he
seemed to believe his blog was the reason for his dismissal160, in particular a post he
wrote titled Heaven knows we’re miserable now161 in which he bemoaned the public’s
“crippling levels of cynicism and pessimism” in the wake of the economic crisis162. The

155 Dale, I., 4th October 2008, Iain Dale’s Diary, And Another Thing... The Sacking of Tom Harris,
<http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2008/10/and-another-thing-sacking-of-tom-harris.html>
156 LabourHome, 4th October 2008, Doesn’t Gordon like LabourHome?,

<http://www.labourhome.org/story/2008/10/4/143342/744>
157 BBC News, 13th October 2008, Friday in Westminster,

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7664358.stm>
158 Wardman, M., 11th October 2008, The Wardman Wire, Tom Harris MP Exit Interview: Spending More

Time With His Blog, <http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2008/10/11/tom-harris-mp-exit-interview-


spending-more-time-with-his-blog/>
159 Ibid.
160 Harris, T., MP., 12st January 2009, Email Interview
161 Harris, T., 19th June 2008, And another thing.., Heaven knows we’re miserable now,

<http://www.tomharris.org.uk/2008/06/19/heaven-knows-were-miserable-now/>
162 Hines, N., 20th June 2008, Times Online, Minister Tom Harris says ‘bloody miserable UK’ comments ill-

timed, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4179823.ece>
P a g e | 36

subsequent media furore at the time forced him to admit, “timing isn’t my strong
point”163.

Both Mark D’Arcy and Iain Dale highlighted another post Mr Harris had written about
the resignation of David Cairns. On 15th September 2008, BBC News reported that an
unnamed Minister was “set to quit” over concerns about Gordon Brown’s leadership164.
The following day The Telegraph named David Cairns as the Minister and he duly
resigned165. On And Another Thing..., Tom Harris wrote a robust defence:

DAVID Cairns is one of my closest friends in politics. He was also one of the most
effective ministers I have ever known - astute judgment, common sense by the
bucketful, impressive political instinct and extremely sharp and witty at the
despatch box. He is also fiercely loyal; he’s never voted against the government
or criticised it publicly. [...] I know that until this morning he had no intention of
resigning. But being named this morning by The Daily Telegraph as the Minister
of State who was the subject of News 24’s report last night forced his hand. When
he says he’s not part of a wider conspiracy to topple the Government, he is telling
the truth.166

In response to Mark D’Arcy highlighting this post, Mr Harris said he knew it would
“annoy people at Number 10”, that he was given a “hard time” at the party conference
later that month because of it, but that he stuck by his friend and meant every word.

When asked whether he thought politicians limited in their extra-curricular political


vocabulary and whether, in reality, blogging for them is a self-destructive act, Mr Harris
replied:

163 Hines, N., Ibid.


164 BBC News, 15th September 2008, Minister ‘set to quit’ over Brown,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7617709.stm>
165 Kirkup, J., Porter, A., 16th September 2008, Telegraph.co.uk, Gordon Brown leadership crisis: Rebel MP

David Cairns still in government,


<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/2968959/Gordon-Brown-leadership-
crisis-Rebel-MP-David-Cairns-still-in-Government.html>
166 Harris, T., 16th September 2008, And another thing..., David Cairns,

<http://www.tomharris.org.uk/2008/09/16/david-cairns/>
P a g e | 37

Possibly. We need to look again at the way we communicate with the public.
They are not impressed by Ministers reciting briefing papers. They want to be
reassured that politicians are normal people. If by writing about my love of
karaoke or doubts about buying Grant Theft Auto 4 for my son has somehow
blotted my copybook in Number 10, this is a very sad day for politics.167

Fear of a fate similar to Mr Harris’ certainly seems to have taken hold in Westminster, as
Iain Dale noted in Total Politics’ Guide to Political Blogging:

It has been hugely disappointing that the last twelve months has seen no rise in
the number of blogging MPs... Our politicians seem to love reading blogs but fear
writing them.168

But he goes on to describe Conservative MP John Redwood’s blog as required reading


for those on the left, right and in the media, evidence perhaps that it is possible to strike
the right balance in the eyes of both government and the blogosphere.

Conclusion

The blogosphere’s impact on Westminster is clearly not a one dimensional affair. MPs
have to be careful if they want to use a blog to reassess how they communicate with the
public, and few have acquired a readership comparable with the likes of Iain Dale or
Guido Fawkes, possibly because they are too careful. On the other hand, to those outside
of Westminster, the blogging platform has proved to be a powerful tool in scrutinising
the activities of those within it. It has demonstrated its “formidable agenda-setting
power”169 and will doubtless continue to do so.

The fact that both these case studies centre on the blogosphere’s impact on politicians’
careers does not mean that the blogosphere is only capable of exposing and
167 Wardman, M., 11th October 2008, Tom Harris MP Exit Interview: Spending More Time With His Blog,
<http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2008/10/11/tom-harris-mp-exit-interview-spending-more-time-
with-his-blog/>
168 Dale, I., 2008, Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging in the UK, p. 13
169 Drezner, D.W., and Farrell, H., 2004, Web of Influence, p. 34
P a g e | 38

embarrassing politicians. In seeking to understand the impact of the blogosphere or


indeed anything else, an investigation needs to consider the most extreme examples in
order to determine whether there is any impact at all. Within the parameters of
Westminster the disruption or cessation of careers is about as extreme as it gets, and
such events are of potentially national significance.

Outside of Westminster, the examples of Matt Drudge, Salam Pax, Nay Myo Kyaw and
Omid Mirsayafi demonstrate the enormous potential impact of the blogosphere. The
case studies above are amongst the most salient examples relevant to the research
question, but the blogosphere – particularly the political blogosphere – is still in its
infancy. It is worth highlighting that, with the above in mind, Guido Fawkes’ blog only
began in 2004. The enormity the blogosphere’s impact elsewhere should be borne in
mind when considering the future of the multi-dimensional relationship between
Westminster and the political blogosphere.
P a g e | 39

CONCLUSION

There have been a number of recurrent themes throughout this investigation. Here they
are separated out and drawn back together for the purposes of clarity, overall
understanding, but most importantly, to identify the key factors that determine the
accuracy of the hypothesis. These categories have been chosen for their relevance to the
investigation as a whole.

Change: Bloggers the New Gatekeepers?

The greatest change considered here is that of the new media environment. As a
nebulous, amorphous concept still in flux, the alterations to it are ongoing. However,
there are some elements of certainty. The change is structural, from a top-down, Fordist
industrial assembly line model of mass media to a symbiotic ecosystem of information
disseminated through flows and feeds, unrestricted by geography, form or finance,
where consumption is governed by user choice alone.
I agree with Ellen Hume’s prescient observation that the role of “gatekeeper” is no
longer the sole preserve of mainstream media journalism. Daniel Drezner points out
that journalists take cues on “what matters” from the blogs170. In addition to this, Tom
Harris made two important observations: first, stories in the blogosphere only receive
the attention they deserve when they appear in the mainstream media; secondly, “the
general public are barely aware of what a blog is”.171 I think this raise an important
point: by virtue of the new media environment and its symbiosis, someone who remains
blissfully unaware of the blogosphere and its capacity to alter the news agenda, still
receiving the news in the same fashion as they have for the last fifty years; they are
experiencing that change whether they know it, like it, or not. The true impact of the
blogosphere on people’s news intake is impossible to disaggregate from the rest of the
ecosystem; what is certain is that it is happening.

170 Drezner, D.W., 2004, Web of Influence, p. 34


171 Harris, T., MP., 12st January 2009, Email Interview
P a g e | 40

False Division

To varying extents, the arguments of, inter alia, Philip E. Agre, Andrew Keen, Markus
Prior, Polly Toynbee and Hazel Blears all rely on the Internet and the blogosphere
having an innate agenda or purpose. Charlie Beckett refutes their arguments about
declining standards to an extent, but not as robustly as I would like. My argument is that
the foundation of these critiques is rendered soft and dangerously wayward by its
prejudice (Polly Toynbee and Hazel Blears make their arguments solely on the basis of
personal experience). Bloggers are not a stupid, homogenous group of monkeys looking
to pour scorn on the establishment. The Internet and the blog are forms on which 1.5
billion people172 impose their own content. Applying any labels to this content is akin to
writing on water.

Content is King

This maxim returns time and again in the literature in arguments about the decline of
print media, the rise of digital technology and how journalism is to survive in the new
media environment, and I support it wholeheartedly. This has implications for the
accuracy of my hypothesis, as I feel that the role of content in assessing the impact of the
blogosphere (on anything at all) is too fundamental to be absented. However, its
necessity is evinced by the next recurrent theme, which is therefore incorporated into
the final conclusion.

Time, Money and Ability


The assertion by Paul Staines that these three criteria are essential in writing a political
blog capable of affecting change and creating impact is inextricably linked to the
arguments about content. The political blogosphere ‘elite’ are as such because they have
these three strings to their blogging bow, and they need them because the world of
politics requires them in order to create successful content. However, this is not an
argument that travels well outside of the political blogosphere, especially when the

172Internet World Stats, 2009, World Internet Users and Population Stats,
<http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm>
P a g e | 41

examples of Salam Pax, Nay Myo Kyaw and Omid Mirsayafi given in Chapter III are
considered. Indeed, what little time, money and ability the latter had has died with him
in prison where he was incarcerated as a result of the content of his blog. In some ways
this only reaffirms that content is king, in the sense that in the blogosphere as a whole,
explosive, controversial and ultimately newsworthy content will win through
irrespective of the blogger’s time, money and ability. For our purposes though, the focus
is politics, and in that arena this theme is crucial.

The Blog as a Tool

At the end of Chapter II I stated that the correct unit of analysis was the blog as a static
tool. Chapters II and III demonstrate that its inherent characteristics are what gives it its
potential as a powerful tool. It is possible to identify these by bearing in mind several
things: there are no barriers to entry, mainstream media journalists look to the blogs for
information, and bloggers outside of the mainstream have no editorial constraints,
meaning they can publish what they want, when they want, which is usually
immediately. Guido Fawkes’ ability to instantly publish received information is bound
to impact upon the behaviour of those concerned and the mainstream media, even if
only by speeding up their response.
The characteristics are therefore: freedom from editorial and economic constraint and
immediacy of publication. It follows that the same can be applied to the Internet as a
whole, as indeed they were on page ten. My initial hypothesis only infers them, and
clearly it is the combination of these characteristics with the content they facilitate that
determines the impact of the blog as a whole.

Final Conclusion

The blogosphere’s impact on the news agenda is evident without always being clearly
identifiable. I find the updated notion of bloggers as gatekeepers in conjunction with the
mainstream media helpful when trying to comprehend and even visualise the feeds and
flows of news in the new media environment. It also reaffirms the false distinction
argument by emphasising the universality of the quest for the best information.
In light of the above modifications to the hypothesis, we can conclude the following:
P a g e | 42

The platform of the blog, by virtue of its freedom from editorial, economic and time-
specific limitations, enables individuals outside of the mainstream media, with time,
money and ability at their disposal, to impact upon and affect those within the arena of
political journalism and Westminster.
P a g e | 43

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P a g e | 49

APPENDIX 1

Interview Questions

1. Do you think political blogs have any real impact outside of the internet? E.g. on news
flow, on the public’s awareness of politics, on MPs’ careers... (Please give examples.)
2. Where do you think the impact of political blogging is felt the most? For example, online
or offline, mostly within Westminster or further out in the public sphere, and so on.
3. Of the times that you have seen or experienced a change in the ‘real world’ (which for
these purposes means outside of the blogosphere) because of something you have
written on your blog, which was the most extreme?
4. Do you therefore feel a greater sense of responsibility now, when writing, than when
you started your blog?
5. Why do you think the majority of successful political blogs are right of centre? Or to put
it another way, why do you think the left have been largely unsuccessful in their
attempts to counteract this?
6. How do you see it evolving as a news medium, and do you intend to eventually pass on
your blogs to any worthy successors?
7. Anything else of note?
P a g e | 50

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