Character Assasination in the Blogosphere

( Courtesy of S.N.A.F.U. )

"When Mainstream Political Kibitzing Comes Online"
by Matt Stoller
Blogging of the President 2004

I'm going to describe a character assasination attempt, the first one of import, in the blogosphere. This is a complicated story. It involves exploiting a heavily reactionary media environment to strike at speech for political purposes. It reveals a bipartisan problem, because blogs carry some characteristics that make them uniquely vulnerable to exploitation. And it's something that's going to happen, again and again, to both Republicans and Democrats, because of the surfeit of information and mainstreaming of online politics.

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