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The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 10, No. 4, 3-27 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1081180X05281395

Blog for America and Civic Involvement

Matthew R. Kerbel

253 St. Augustine Liberal Arts Center, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085; phone: 610-519-4553; fax: 610-519-7487matthew.kerbel{at}villanova.edu

Joel David Bloom

Northwest Survey and Data Services; Political Science Department, 927 Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, 1284 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403; phone: 541-346-0891jbloom{at}uoregon.edu

Web logs (blogs) were an integral component of the 2004 presidential campaign and are a new medium for civic engagement. Arguably, the most important campaign blog was Blog for America, which served as a nerve center for Governor Howard Dean's insurgent presidential campaign. The authors offer an initial assessment of the community that developed around Blog for America and its orientation toward civic engagement, based on an original content analysis of 3,066 unique posts encompassing every entry in the Dean blog from March 15, 2003, through January 27, 2004. The guiding hypothesis is that blog discussion centered on a set of system-affirming topics absent from or unusual in political coverage on television,particularly substantive policy debate and community action.The authors find Blog for America to be an example of how the Internet is emerging as a vehicle for enhanced civic involvement with the potential to counteract the negative effects of television on the political process.

Key Words: blog • bloggers • Internet • civic engagement • framing • Howard Dean • campaigns


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