Blogger? Reader? Researcher wants your opinions
This University of North Florida grad student updates her pages at Facebook, a popular site for college students and older teens.
In the mail this week I received a request from Emily Metzgar, a doctoral student in media and public affairs at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Metzgar is researching the impact of blogs on state politics around the country.
The Republican Party might take a look at the impact of blogs on national politics. Bloggers often drive traffic to candidates’ Web sites. The Star-Tribune (Minn.) looked at Web sites for political hopefuls from both parties. The Democratic data is impressive:
Former senator John Edwards’ site had about 690,000 unique visitors in March, when his wife, Elizabeth, announced she had a recurrence of cancer, more than the combined number of unique visitors to the sites of Rudy Giuliani (297,000), Sen. John McCain (258,000) and Mitt Romney (76,000).
Metzgar is asking readers and writers of blogs to take a survey she’s devised. “Previous blog research has focused on the impact of the nation’s big-name, A-list blogs on American politics,� she writes. “Stories about the impact of those blogs range from the downfall of Trent Lott to Dan Rather’s memo-gate to George Allen’s more recent macaque moment. But to date, no one has considered the impact of blogs at the state level.�
Metzgar’s survey is posted online; you can participate in it until June 30, 2007. The whole survey took me about 15 minutes.
So here’s your chance to be part of some groundbreaking research. Let your voice be heard.
Meanwhile, if the Republicans are smart, they’ll get on the Internet bandwagon. The party has a lot at stake in the presidential election, and at the moment the Internet is squarely in the Democrats’ corner, in my opinion.
There’s nothing like a blog when you’re dealing with a macaque or a solid brick of money stashed in your freezer. (Photo & Text by Kay B. Day)
Word Press, Technorati, Tags, U.S. presidential election, blogs, U.S. politics, Republicans, Democrats, presidential candidates, Internet, political strategists
January 15th, 2008 at 6:49 am
[...] sounds antithetical to challenge the party that will provide the nomination Edwards needs to win the presidency. The DLC has made it clear that Edwards is out of the race and talking [...]