Is the tide turning?
I wrote the other day about how libertarian blogs seemed to be in decline; now the latest UK Wikio rankings appear to show that left blogs are on the rise, with the usual suspects toppled from top spot and Tories tumbling all over the place. And yes look, there's some fool with a monkey at No 15.
It may be tempting for us on the left to mutually backslap and go into a circlejerk of self-aggrandisement, but that would be hubris and probably quite wrong. We don't know if anything has really changed - those figures could be a blip, as Matt Wardman explains, or they could simply be the result of an adjustment to the algorithm. The figures always have been a bit of a circlejerk due to the incestuous linking between certain blogs and there's no reason to suppose that's stopped - or that people rather put out by being knocked off their perch won't figure out a new way to push themselves up.
All that said, though, it's not a surprise that there should be some adjustment in our view of political blogs after the election. The right must find it tough to get the same ire they did for New Labour. They're in power now, and it's the left who provide the counterpoint - Tories, Lib Dems and small-state right-wingers are very much the establishment. If you want to hear someone go on and on about the deficit, Labour's mess, £120m interest a day, cuts being tough choices because of Labour, and so on, you don't need to find it on a blog - it's there on the news from the Government, or from the Tory Party machine at Conservative Home. Genuine blogs need to either be entertaining, or well written, or provide something different, to keep interest going.
Maybe it's hard now that there's not the appetite for hilariously pretending on a daily basis that Gordon Brown is mentally ill, but there you are. It's harder to be a challenger than a cheerleader, but it's time to start trying; I don't think people look to political blogs to simply confirm that the Government is lovely and the last lot were a shower. We can get that in the mainstream.
As I've said, if there are ways to fiddle the figures, people will work it out. November might have provided a nice surprise for some of us, but I'd be surprised if it lasted. All the same, I think it's a bit of a correction or adjustment towards a more accurate picture of UK blogs. But we'll see. I'll wait and see for a couple of months before we can say anything approaching the idea that left blogging is on top.
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November 4th, 2010 - 09:52
That it should be happening at the same time as punters talk sense on the Mail website (the comment threads under the Cameron Photographer and Nutt Drug Report stories) is certainly encouraging.
November 4th, 2010 - 09:55
As an amateur statistician, looking at those rankings a clear feature is the level of volatility. If one blog can gain 53 places since the previous list (congrats!) then we can theorise that any other blog can have a similar or even slightly less large change in either direction by the next time the list is produced, and therefore trying to read any trends in the data is very difficult indeed.
Presumably this will settle down over time as markets tend to mature and stabalise (witness dot com stocks 10 years ago compared to now; Amazon increase x100 then lost 90 of that, ending up at a mere x10 increase, whereas other highly values stocks simply went bust). And no doubt the change in government will have some effect on political blogs. But I would be wary of reading too much detail or long term patterns.
November 8th, 2010 - 15:04
As an even more amateur statistician, this is a one month volatile sample which is normally more stables
Change of algorithm too.
My detailed comment here.
November 4th, 2010 - 13:16
I just wanted to tentatively put a hand up and say that there’s no need to keep sticking with the left-good right-bad hypothesis. I’m a Liberatarian and I’m sure you and I would disagree heavily on economics but socially we’re certainly in tune, I hate the Daily Mail and the Tea Party and snivelling Lib Dems just as most on the left do. I want more freedom and no restrictions on freedom of the press just as the left do but I’m technically right-wing and therefore the bogieman. I really love the posts on this blog but I don’t think it’s a hugely left-wing blog it’s just rationality and sense which attract me.
November 4th, 2010 - 13:27
Well I would agree with a lot of what you’ve said there. I’m naturally a liberal-left type person but I’m not rigidly sticking to any doctrine.
November 6th, 2010 - 21:02
I think people should be free from ignorance, poverty and crime.
Do you?
I don’t think so.
Because these fundamental freedoms all require government intervention.
Your libertarian “freedom” is a narrow selfish freedom for a small clique of rich people not to be taxed.
That’s why libertarians are laughed at. Rightly so.
November 5th, 2010 - 12:01
It’s all a quite simple
Yes there’s something significant happening, but this month they turned up the Twitter factor, and the left is more mobhanded on Twitter.
Not judging just describing.
Twill rebalance I suspect, but not all the way back.
Main concern: God save us from any new blog traffic wars.
November 5th, 2010 - 12:53
Yes, I wonder if certain people will suddenly start pimping a lot of blog posts on Twitter much more than they usually do…
November 8th, 2010 - 15:06
Sensible people have their RSS aliassed into their Twitter anyway
.
More comment from me later. Wikio currently digesting feedback.