Peter Griffin: Election fever brings political bloggers out in hordes

As if there weren't enough pundits analysing the pre-election build-up in newspaper columns and on current affairs shows, we have a web full of wannabe commentators with agendas to serve.

Just as blogging reared its head in a big way for the first time in a US presidential election last year, New Zealand is experiencing pre-election blogging fever for the first time.

Dozens of commentators and MPs have taken to the internet to voice their opinions on the big issues.

But do bloggers have any influence? Can they alter opinion polls or swing elections?

Overseas evidence suggests not. Unless, that is, there is a major scandal brewing, in which case bloggers can fan the flames of outrage with impressive results.

Few Americans will forget last September's "Rathergate" scandal, which left TV network CBS red in the face and its longtime news anchor, Dan Rather, taking early retirement.

CBS' 60 Minutes show revealed documents suggesting President George W. Bush had dodged the draft and whitewashed his military record in the National Guard.

Exactly 19 minutes after the show, a posting at Freerepublic.com questioned the authenticity of the 1972-era documents based on their style.

The momentum grew on other sites such as PowerlineBlog.com, RatherBiased.com and WizBangBlog.com, with much geeky talk of typewriters and type fonts.

Soon the mainstream media picked up the story, which led to the inevitable backdown by CBS. It was blogging at its best. In no other medium could posters easily voice their misgivings without the daunting task of approaching reporters.

A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project pays special attention to the CBS debacle (which spawned its own media blog, www.rathergate.com).

According to Pew, the US election campaign showed blogs were great at adding the "buzz" factor to electioneering. But they only played a deeper role when bits of information teased from readers were taken up by mainstream media.

The local political blogging scene holds the same potential to cut to the heart of political stories, though the hot topics so far have been restricted to number-crunching on tax cuts and debate about Don Brash's aversion to raising his voice to women.

If we had another "Paintergate", we would possibly see our political bloggers catch fire as new titbits of information came to light online.

At the top of the pile of local bloggers are the likes of those writing under the banner of the left-leaning publicaddress.net or their right-wing counterpart, David Farrar at Kiwiblog.com.

Several party leaders are blogging daily on the Stuff news website.

The reader comments show a lot of people are browsing the politicians' blogs.

"It's so much better than the other blogs - clear, concise, and common sense. How come he doesn't get the time of day from the media generally?", wrote Stuff reader David Chaston of Act leader Rodney Hide's blog.

Blogs posted on the Herald website at nzherald.co.nz/electionblog give us an insight into what hard-working Kiwis think.

Take internet entrepreneur Annette Presley's "What else sucks in New Zealand" blog, for example.

Those watching from the sidelines and running their own sites usually wear their ideology on their sleeve. As a result their blogs are often tiresome to read.

What else would you expect from the right-wing NZPundit.com: "You lefties have a real dilemma. You might be into high taxes and nanny state - but do you really want a megalomaniac running the country?" Grant Tyrell wrote about Helen Clark's speeding motorcade.

The blogs of the politicians themselves reveal little we don't already know except maybe a few personality quirks. Some read as if penned by press secretaries.

Most people are too busy working and organising their lives to be interested in the talk of blogging politicians or the rants of the opinionated trying to out-intellectualise one another.

The Pew Internet Project found that blogs may have the potential to influence politics.

"But for a conversation to acquire the intense simultaneity of buzz and for buzz to register with force in public affairs requires a number of other factors to be present, few of which are likely to be at the disposal of a single blogger or even a blogging collective," it concluded.

The internet is a comfortable host to scandal, and while hundreds of thousands of words will be written by hundreds of political bloggers in the coming weeks, it will be one seemingly innocuous story the internet community seizes on that will show the stink bloggers are capable of creating. In other words, our Rathergate.