Who was the world’s first blogger?

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Blogs were officially born in December 1997, when Jorn Barger created the term "weblog" on his site, Robot Wisdom. Then in the spring of 1999, Peter Merholz, host of peterme and an internet analyst announced: "For What It's Worth I've decided to pronounce the word "weblog" as wee'- blog. Or "blog" for short." But in the book I'm working on for Oxford University Press, I'll argue that blog-like political communication ventures have a long history. Here is my favorite candidate for (Proto)political Blogger Zero. (more…)...
Read More

Blogs, Politicians and the “Face in the Crowd”

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, in one of a series of dismissals of bloggers, summed up their contribution to the information society by the following: "Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough." If, indeed, that it was all bloggers were doing or could do, it would not be enough, but blogging today is much more than media criticism. In fact, there are bloggers who are doing everything that journalists ever did. Indeed that's the point about the world of "PolicyByBlog": blogging is a genre, a medium and a technology that can be used by professionals. I don't think Keller was making a movie allusion. But to historians of political communication who are also interested in politicians using blogs to reach the people it is worth recalling the implications of the word "chew." I think of a potent icon of individual populist autocracy gone mad. There were no blogs in 1956 when director Elia Kazan...
Read More

Blogs of War: Then and Now

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
A few years ago I wrote a book on the history of the visualization of war.  Today, writing a book on blogging, I see a striking differences between two "blogs of war," that is, first person accounts of a battle in the Middle East. Then: In c. 1300 BCE, the pharaoh Rameses II and his army fought a battle against a Hittite army at Kadesh, in what is now Syria. The battle was a draw; in fact, the Egyptians ended up retreating. But Rameses' memorial temple--an instance of massive communication--shows on its 100-foot walls pictures and hieroglyphics of the great ruler as victorious. As originally painted, Rameses is bronze skinned, broad shouldered, long armed, resolute of face, wearing the twin crowns of upper and lower Egypt, and many times larger than the Hittites and his own men--a superman in the anthropological as well as comic book sense. (Rameses became the "Ozymandias"  who, in Shelley's poem, demanded that all "look upon my works, ye mighty,...
Read More

Blogs as “Scribbling Mercuries”: Marketplace of Ideas or Duel to the Death of Ideas?

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
The blog is possible through the convergence of many new technologies: revolutions in human communication that were both tipping points (of ideas) and points of the tip (of new things). In parallel, more than half a millennium ago (1452-1454/55), Johann Gutenberg printed his two-volume, 1,282-page, 42-line Bible in Mainz. He produced 180 copies (150 on paper and, it is believed, 30 on parchment), using about 20 assistants in the process. His innovations included a screw press (a converted wine press) and moveable type with individual elements (periods, letters, upper- and lower-case letters). Interestingly, the small number of Bibles hardly represented a "mass" communication, but one of Gutenberg's follow-up projects did. To raise money to pay for a crusade against Muslim Turks, the Roman Catholic Church contracted with Gutenberg to print thousands of Letters of Indulgence--certificates the Catholic faithful could buy for cash, absolving them of their sins. The practice was among the chief complaints of a young German monk named Martin...
Read More

BLOGWARS on the DAILY SHOW with Jon Stewart (May 8)

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
I am scheduled to be on the DAILY SHOW with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central this Thursday (May 8) to talk about political blogging and my book, BLOGWARS. Everyone's first piece of advice for me about being a good guest: Don't try to be funny. I think I can manage that… The Daily Show has become an institution of American politics very much linked to a culture where people--especially younger voters--seek out political information from non-traditional sources. [A KU student (Nathan Rodriguez) in our school's master's program is writing his thesis on the show, to some extent based on his time as an intern.] The show is part of the political culture it satirizes and, in some cases, influences it. The show is considered a source of information, an explainer of politics, and of course a "speaker" of (funny) truth to power. TDS's effects are hard to quantify: Think in terms of Saturday Night Live's "effect" on the Clinton-Obama race! However, there...
Read More

The Origins of BLOGWARS, part 1

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
I got a chance on my DAILY SHOW appearance to mention when I first started working on my book, BLOGWARS. Here are more details--partly drawn from BLOGWARS itself. In my mind there were three points of origin of the book. 1. In 1996, a colleague and I conducted one of the first studies of presidential campaign Web sites. Our main finding was that they were mostly online "tackboards," posting information rather than developing content that exploited the hyperlinking and interactive qualities of the Internet. We stated, however, in the conclusions that: "It is currently possible, though no candidate has done this, to host an online talk show where the candidate fields questions from users throughout the nation." Then, as an afterthought, I began looking at "personal political Web sites" created not by the campaign apparatus—political consultants, managers, advisers, or parties—but by individuals who supported the candidate or some cause. Many were raucous and crude, but it did seem that personalized mass...
Read More

Paleolithic Blogs

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Dave (askdavetaylor) Taylor gave the Keynote address of the Executive & Entrepreneur track at the Blogworld & New Media Expo 2008 in Las Vegas. (I am here as track director for the Citizen Journalism Workshop). Mr. Taylor made the comment that from the very beginning media--such as early cave paintings--has been biased in that it reflected what the creators wanted to show and not what they did not want to show. Interestingly I discussed this point in my book Visions of War (St. Martin's, 1999) which looked at the history of pictures of war. I noted that cave paintings, like those at Lascaux, France were the first physical "medium" of communications outside of the human body. They date back to the appearance of us--anatomically modern humans--and flourished during the Upper Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) era about 35,000 to 12,000 years. Interestingly, when researchers have counted the scenes, flora, and fauna represented in the images on caves you see a huge "bias."...
Read More

Perlmutter at Jeremy Taylor Show

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
I was a guest on the Jeremy Taylor Show on 1320 am radio in Lawrence. Our planned topic was "What will happen next in politics and media and our personal lives after the very prominent rise of online social-interactive media in campaign 2008?" Among my points: It will be interesting to see how the Obama administration uses OSIM in governing and gaining support for policies, programs, and projects in a different or similar way than they did for winning votes and raising money for the presidential election. I suggested that it would be a mistake to overdo OSIM--that is, if all those who had given their text message address to the Obama campaign received a note from him daily, there would be a significant turn-off of interest and enthusiasm. Like all weapons in politics or war, OSIM outreach must be used prudently. Second, referring to my previous post on a "slow blogging movement," I wonder whether we will reach a saturation effect, with instantaneousness, interactivity,...
Read More