“under-representation of left…”

From a blog of Glenn Reynold’s talk at a conference this week. This is from the last paragraph in the story.

Question about under-representation of left-leaning political interests in the Blogosphere. The Internet is fairly libertarian and rationalistic; this probably contributes. Blogs and big media in a negative feedback loop; many people blog because they’re tired of shouting at the TV or writing letters to the editor which may or may not be printed weeks later. If there’s a liberal media bias, and Glenn thinks there is, this may help explain the landscape.

We reading the same blog-o-sphere? Guess it just goes to show you something I’ve been thinking about the past few weeks. People are more likely to believe the things they are exposed to on a regular basis. I thought of it the political sense. Californian’s seem to be totally out of touch with what is “really” going on in the world. They think the whole country is against the “war” with Iraq. Its a given owning a gun is wrong. George Bush is stupid. But that’s not how the rest of the country thinks. If they lived where I do and worked where I work, would they change their beliefs?

Of course if this theory is true, then am I the same? Do I believe what I’m exposed to? And in reality its true. And I work to make it more so. That’s why I seek out a conservative voice on the net. Why I listen to talk radio. But I like to think my opinions are completely thought out and original. And some of them are, but I need to be vigilant in watching for ideas I believe with out thinking.

Also its important to watch for believing things that seem true but aren’t. Going back to Californians. They aren’t all liberals, there are conservatives out there. I can’t generalize to the whole population. I also believed the whole Blog-o-sphere was left leaning because of the 20 blogs I read daily, 4 or 5 made liberal comments. There are hundreds of thousands of blogs, my sample was poor. And blogging encourages getting more of the same. If I want new blogs I look at the blogs I read for new links. When a blogger says something liberal he’s going to link to another liberal. So I see too people saying the same thing. I have to search out the opposing voice.

This getting long and not as coherent as I would like so I’m going to stop now.