It’s pretty telling that a link from a Channel 4 special report (to a post I wrote months ago) has not resulted in an avalanche of traffic to this site. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that one of their bloody links is broken. Oi.
Nosemonkey, who gets a name-check for starting that particular discussion, is surely having better luck.
For those who are still interested in all this, I’ve expanded my pessimistic view on British political blogging here — but may be backpedaling on refining my view somewhat in light of the rather more self-confident blogosphere that has emerged during the general election.
Perhaps because British political journalists are still thinking in terms of what happened in the United States last November, the election has brought the small British blogosphere far more attention than usual — although much of it has not been particularly enlightening.
All this attention indicates that some political journalists clearly expect new media to be a significant factor in this election, however cloudy everyone’s vision of this significance remains.
The British blogosphere does not yet have the critical mass to be anything like the American blogosphere. Britain’s time for wide-spread, participatory citizen media may come, but I think that it’s still one or two Parliaments down the line.
Part of the reason is that Britain still lags behind the United States in terms of Internet and broadband penetration, and there is significant inequality in the distribution of broadband Internet access between Parliamentary constituencies. The value of the Internet for political campaigning is therefore not the same in all parts of the country.
Still, national mass blog readership and participation may not matter to the political signifance of the British blogosphere. It’s worth recalling that even in the United States, only 26 percent of Internet users read blogs, and only some of those read political blogs. Despite the idealistic blogosphere rhetoric about “citizen media” a small, elite audience of gatekeepers and opinion leaders in traditional media is probably more significant in terms of enhancing blogosphere influence than mass readership and participation.
In other words, the mere fact that journalists with national outlets reading a handful of major British political blogs matters.
Hits through being linked by Channel 4 – about six.
Hits through being linked by the Guardian’s Newsblog – about twenty.
Hits via being shortlisted for the Guardian’s weblog awards – about twenty extra a day for about a week.
Hits via being linked by Instapundit – about nine hundred one day, five hundred the day after, two hundred the day after that.
Make of that what you will. But you are almost certainly right that the way blogs (in this country, at least) are likely to have an impact is via extant “opinion-formers” picking up on them – and then usually ripping them off without credit.
I get 2000 to 3000+ a day hits.
I’m not sure if thats high or low – the biggest hits come when a journo admits to getting the story from Guido’s blog.
But the number of stories which get picked up and amplified is gratifying. My site-record reads like a list of media companies… but its starting to go two ways. Journalists are becoming a handy source.
I’m finding well timed provocative comments on the Guardian news blog linked to relevant posts pays dividends. I hit the jackpot today with my comment on Toynbee’s post today – since 1pm it has brought 838 people onto perfect.co.uk (and counting) – about 35% of my traffic today. A previous comment brought 477 and a mention on the BBC blog brought 428, so coverage by the ‘MSM’ should not be dismissed out of hand.
Getting mentioned on the Guardian, Observer, BBC or Times blogs does hopefully help to introduce new readers (blog virgins most probably) to the blog in question, but more importantly for all of us, from there (and over time) out into the larger British political blogosphere.
And perhaps one day, this conversation will seem more significant that it does now…
I really did not mean to use the word ‘today’ 3 times in one sentence.
For what it’s worth, here’s Wednesday’s Top of the British Blogs – that extra traffic helped us up into 5th place for the first time…