Are Bloggers the New Political Activists?

             Blogs were met with little aversion, only brief skepticism.  It was a strange concept, posting your ideas to an unknown audience and a very large one at that.  But once the initial apprehension subsided, blogs sprouted up everywhere making the internet fruitful with innovative ways to express, discuss, and collaborate ideas.  There are blogs about everything now; blogs about food, parenting, medicine, etc. but an important blog ‘type’ to consider are political blogs and how that alters the relationship between the government and its people. 

            Bloggers in many oppressive countries are hailed as political activists, pioneers that dare to speak out against their government and motivate their communities.  This has been proven true in the case of China and the Middle East.  The idea itself, I find, is more romanticized than truly effective.  This idea may disappoint you or even infuriate you but please remember I am not claiming bloggers are not effective, I am only trying to remind people that bloggers are not the new activists.  I wish they were.  And yet, only so much political change can occur from behind a computer.  Blogging is anonymous and can be done from anywhere.  In this way I believe blogging lacks the type of authenticity or even responsibility for what is posted.  It is easier to say than to do and this is true for anything.  In online political forums, spokespersons from a presidential candidates’ campaign can easily post on hundreds of blogs without the people’s knowledge.  Anonymity can be incredibly useful by making no one blogger better than the other but it is also a dangerous fact about the internet.

I like to think that bloggers are motivators rather than activists.  They incite ideas and conversations that stimulate constructive thought in its readers.  Ideas are words and that is exactly what blogs are.  However I still have a hard time calling bloggers political activists.  Bloggers are behind a computer, they are anonymous, they are not physically doing something in the real world that will translate into political action.  The internet has yet to over throw dictatorships (as was previously assumed in the case of the Middle East) or put in place new laws.  Blogs are the start of political activism but they are not the heart of it all.  Yes, I will agree that bloggers are a new driving force that we have to be aware of if we are aware of the digital age at all but I believe bloggers need to not only discuss but act because it is that last step that most people are not daring to take.  My generation, the youth, have never lived during a time of world war or revolution (like the 60s), we have never fought for our rights or for the rights of others.  We see and read so much about far away places but are almost desensitized by the influx of information available at our fingertips.  Bloggers need to put a name to their writing, take claim, and take action.