Oh so meta

It would appear that my snarky comment about blogging skills in the first post was a little remiss. There aren't many there to dust off.

I'm writing my Media and Politics paper about teh blogosphere, but the trouble is that I'm absolutely stuck as to how to narrow down my topic. I've been taking notes in Word to try to save the environment, so I have two files on the go at all times: one with quotations (with citations) and other notes on readings, and one with my own running commentary as I try desperately to shape some semblance of a coherent topic. It still looks like it's being written by a hyperactive four-year-old with an impressively large and filthy vocabulary.

(What? As far as I can tell, a major component of the blogosphere thrives on discussing the continuous stream of closeted Republicans outing themselves in spectacularly stupid ways. That's an awful lot of sodomy jokes.)

As of right now, here are a few ideas:
Based on Lippman, technological change that creates shifts in the way we shape the pictures in our heads. Blogging allows us more access to information, which in theory will...ok this one is pretty weak.

There is a fairly large body of work on the agenda-setting role that blogs play in the political sphere. I don't entirely buy in to this idea, and I'd like to do more research and unpack it. Partly because I think that a large number of people read blogs to enhance their opinions about what is already in the news. I know that there have been plenty of exceptions in which a story broke in the blogosphere and then spread elsewhere, but these have leaned somewhat to the side of scandal politics, rather than placing key issues in front of policy-makers. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do think that those sex scandals I was mentioning earlier occupy a much larger part of any "agenda-setting function" *a pretty weak theory IMHO anyway* than do issues of policy.

The other problem with this question of blogs as making the public think about issues is that when a big issue does hit, the fact that everything is editable, commentable, and otherwise open for discussion and argument means that so much of the time, it devolves into petty arguing, partisanship, and craziness. While I love this in a blog like Sadly, No! because of its irreverence and its refusal to take itself or anything else too seriously, the Malkin-Klein thing over SCHIP seemed frankly ridiculous. I don't know if it helped to prove that blogs are as credible or at least as useful as the MSM, in any case.

Anyway, I clearly don't know what I'm talking about, but I am having some trouble coordinating everything I've been reading into a coherent thesis. I think I need some sleep.

*****
Women in House is a terrifying 15 days away. I can't believe it is actually happening - I keep obsessively checking the email, convinced that I'll find that we forgot to book the rooms, or the restaurant, or, you know, contact MPs or something.

I can't wait! I just finished typing up a master list of participants and some of their applications were really outstanding. I am definitely looking forward to meeting these women, and to hearing about their experiences on the trip.