The Rise of the Blogosphere

On a recent episode of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart made this comedic introduction to a story about the rise of bloggers, “Chances are, five years ago, if you heard the word blogger, you would have assumed it was some sort of derivation or truncation, referring to one who maintains a web log, and you'd of been right! Well done, hypothetical you!”

For the last few years, political junkies from both sides of the aisle have been creating their own blogs in hopes to further their political agendas. The Blogosphere is a term used to describe the community of blogs on the internet. PubSub.com, a monitor of internet traffic stated that they were currently monitoring 8 million blogs that existed, 4.6 million of which they consider to be active. These bloggers have been reporting news that the mainstream media, including big three networks, cable channels and newspapers have kept silent about. They have created stirs about a variety of issues forcing the mainstream media to report on them.

They have also helped raise figures in the millions for political campaigns and brought attention to some candidates who would have otherwise remained largely unknown in the 2004 campaigns.

Perhaps the first candidate to be propelled forward by the blogosphere was none other than current Democratic National Committee chair, Dr. Howard Dean. The liberal sect of the blogosphere embraced Dean, who started polling in the single digits, due to his status as the outsider candidate and progressive message.

Democratic activists started a trend of holding small living room meetings about Howard Dean in order to get people who have never been involved in politics excited about the Dean campaign, recruiting volunteers and raising large amounts of funds for the campaign, bringing him to the fore-front of the democratic primaries, only narrowly being defeated by John Kerry. Dean rose over $52 million dollars in his campaign, 97% of which came from individual contributions.