From The Nation: A forthcoming study by researchers at Harvard, Yale and Berkeley looks at political blogs right and left.
So . . . Why is that?
Some options:
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This study looks at 2008, when Democratic enthusiasm for Barack Obama, particularly among highly polarized true believers, reached epic heights. Naturally such folks would seek channels that allow them to display that enthusiasm, thus raising blog participation - as long as the election cycle lasts.
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Conservatives tend to be older, and therefore would be slower to adapt to web 2.0-style glitz. The article debunks this interpretation, but not convincingly. Note the disparity between fundraising blogs - in the real-world totals, both libs and cons are about equally good at fundraising.
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Among left-wingers, there is a larger proportion of people with free time and tech savvy to make contributions to blogs. This includes students, academics, non-profit and government workers. Right-wingers who blog often do it full-time, so you get fewer people with greater involvement, hence one- or two-man shows like Marginal Revolution.
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Liberals are freer, better people! The OP, while nearly content-less, doubtless prefers this interpretation.
The answer is obvious: liberals are good, and conservatives are bad.
As far as I can tell that never happened; Obama was only regarded as some sort of Messiah by the Left in the fantasies of the Right.
It’s also probably true. The American Right these days is extreme, and very intolerant of disagreement and outsiders. And the Right has as far as I can tell always been morally in the wrong; pro-slavery, pro-segregation, anti-woman, anti-gay, you name it and if it’s a moral issue the Right are wrong. So yes, they are “bad people”; the Left is not always good but the Right is always bad.
The Left and Right are not mirror images of each other, despite how it’s politically correct to pretend they are. Another example of how the Left and Right think differently:
Conservatives and liberals are simply different kinds of people; they don’t just have different opinions.
You’re finally starting to make some sense!
That might simply be an instance of group polarization, which you will find left, right and elsewhere.
This is not a debate position, it’s a screed, and I can’t see how it is relevant to the thread topic. This is a forum for debate and it’s not intended just for broadsides against the political or social opposition. Consider posting stuff like this in the Pit in the future unless you can keep it on topic and back it up with specific examples.
I thought that slavery, segregation, etc were specific examples actually.
And it was two people before me who brought up the respective moral worth of liberals and conservatives; I was being on topic, as much as they were.
They’re also examples that require defining left and right in a way that I’m not sure is historically accurate.
They were being sarcastic and responding to something the OP seems to be implying. But I’ll make a note on that point.
Let’s confine this discussion to potential reasons for differences in the blogosphere without the left vs. right jabs, please.
Conservatives are individualists. Liberals are collectivists.
Conservative or interested in reportage. Liberals are more interested in commentary.
Of course, the reverse seems to be true on talk radio. So maybe this study just shows that conservatives tend toward radio, liberals tend toward blogs. Or something else.
Blogging emerged at a time when the Left was in opposition, so its blogging focused on organizing.
The Right believes that its point of view is marginalized in major media, so its blogging focused on reportage.
Since we’re throwing out WAG’s anyways, I’ll guess that its because a lot of Conservative organizing is done through religious groups, and liberals don’t have a very good analog to those. As a result, they needed another outlet for politcal organizing/fundrasing/community building and turned towards the internet to do so.
Alternative theory: much of the political infrastructure on the internet was built during the Bush administration. During that time, liberals were more focused on organizing politically to regain power (or at least protest Bush era policies), Conservatives didn’t really have as much focus on that aspect of the internet, since its harder to get people motivated to organize to stay in power then it is to throw off the tyranical oppressors.
Alternative alternative theory: Younger folk tend more liberal and are more likely to vote Dem, and also are more comfortable with the social-networking aspect, while older, GOP types tend to view the internet as a new method for delivering an experience that they’re more or less used to, reading opinon columns in the newspaper.
Give me five minutes, and I can come-up with twenty more vaguely plausible, evidence free theories 
This may be problematic. Since some reasons that may be stated could be seen as jabs.
For example, what I’m about to say. It’s not intended as a jab, but I’m sure it will be seen as one by some on here.
At least part of the reason, IMHO, is the nature of today’s right, especially on the web. It’s become somewhat divorced from reality.
Keep in mind, I’m not talking about simply fiscal responsibility and a belief in capitalism. I’d welcome a return of those discussions. I’m not even totally at odds with those types of Republicans.
I’m talking about Randism. I’m talking about birthers. I’m talking about religious fundamentalism. I’m talking about people who deny settled science. I’m talking about fear and loathing of homosexuals. I’m talking about people who seem to think that the current gulf gusher isn’t a big deal because “airplanes crash, and we don’t stop flying”. I’m talking about people who think the current President is part of a Muslim plot to destroy America.
I’m talking about people who see mainstream culture and accepted scientific thinking as some kind of leftist plot. I’m talking about people who have only a passing acquaintance with reality. Such people don’t care for real discussion or disagreement, so they limit people’s ability to debate them.
Take Conservapedia for example. First we had Wikipedia, which prides itself on being factual and objective. That wasn’t acceptable to Phyllis Schlafly’s little boy Andrew. It was obviously a leftist plot so he had to set the record straight. He had to have a conservative wikipedia.
Wikipedia strives to arrive at it’s goals of objectivity and correctness by allowing anyone to edit. Admittedly, the real world has forced them to set some limits, but overall they’re very open, and overall, they come close to their goals.
This didn’t work for Conservapedia. They pretty quickly discovered that the only way they could preserve their version of reality was to lock it down and limit who can edit.
This, IMHO, is at least partly the reason for what the article is talking about. Today’s right has a largely manufactured “reality”, and manufactured realities don’t hold up well against debate.
I will add that many (but not all) of the right-wingers on the Dope don’t fall into this category. They’re not the ones the article is talking about. They wouldn’t be here engaging in such open and vigorous discussion if they were.
The same tendency toward exclusivism that davidm describes and that is reflected in conservative blogs, is also present in the current Texas textbook controversy. A very conservative committee has voted to make changes to a sixth grade history book so that it has a conservative viewpoint on the history of our country.
Such a move would affect textbooks all over the country because Texas orders so many textbooks that publishers write books with Texas’s requirements in mind.
And when liberals rewrite history books to prominently include minor female and minority characters while excluding more significant white males, this is…?
Odd conclusion to derive from that datum. I’d have drawn the opposite. :dubious:
I’ve certainly noticed the tendency OP mentions. Liberal blogs are full of liberals arguing with each other, and right-wingers coming in to argue also. Conservative blogs and wikis tend to be heavily censored.
To me, it’s clear that liberals are more interested in genuine debate, analytic thinking, and freedom of speech. Can anyone point us to a webpage which shows leftist and rightist numbers among academia (preferably broken down by field)?
(In other threads here at SDMB, rightists have argued that leftists rely strictly on rational thought, while rightists “go beyond” mere reason to embrace higher human virtues like loyalty and family. I wonder if this characterization is just to hide the fact that most rightists really aren’t much into rational thought.)
Something you made up?
In other words, cite?
“My side is the side of the Truth; your side is biased.”
Conservatives want conclusions; liberals want conversations.