To help add to the notion that the Blogosphere likes nothing more than talking about itself, I shall now proceed to talk about the Blogosphere. Earlier in the week a brouhaha erupted over the fact that a number of persons left comments at HuffPo (at this post) that they were disappointed that Vice President Cheney was not killed in the attack on the Afghan military base he was visiting. These comments were later expunged by HuffPo (see the PJM story for more details: Rewriting HerStory: Huffpo Expunges, Edits 100s of Comments at the Cheney Hate Festival).
A few brief responses: 1) it is contemptible to wish death on a fellow American because one has political differences with that person, 2) only someone unfamiliar with the internet (and, for that matter, human nature) would have been surprised by those comments, and 3) the idea that a blog would decide that a set of comments left on its site were highly offensive is not “rewriting history” it is using discretion in dealing with content left by third parties. Anyone who has run a blog for any amount of time has had to delete comments because they were offensive in a way that was beyond the pale.
The above described event led to a discussion about two things: 1) the usage of cherry-picking of comments and statements as a means of criticizing specific blogs or, more specifically, types of bloggers in terms of ideology and then, 2) a debate over whether the left or right hemispheres of the Blogosphere is more profane in their usage of language (culminating in a challenge by InstaPunk regarding which “side” used George Carlin’s 7 words you can’t say on television with greater frequency).
I think a lot of this has special resonance because of the recent experiences of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.
For some discussion of the “cherry-picking” aspect of the discussion see James Joyner and Glenn Greenwald.
On balance I find the whole notion of using comments to prove anything about a given ideological perspective to be specious. Further, for whatever reason, certain sites generate a panoply of ugliness (such as Free Republic and the Democratic Underground). Along those lines, I concur with Kevin Drum (via a link from the comments in James’ post above):
“Kevin’s Law” has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? It would go something like this: “If you’re forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you’ve pretty much made exactly the opposite point.”
Indeed.
Now, on to the question of whether left or right bloggers use more profane language. InstaPunk issued the following challenge:
Well, I propose an exercise to be perfomed by those who have the software and expertise to carry it out. The exercise is this: Search six months’ worth of content, posts and comments, of the 20 most popular blogs on the right and the left. The search criteria are George Carlin’s infamous “7 Dirty Words.”
The News Buckit attempted to answer the challenge using the Google searches:
through a mix of TTLB and 2006’s Weblog Award lists — to be the 18 biggest Lefty blogs, and 22 biggest Righty blogs. I couldn’t account for the 6-month time period, and I even gave the Lefty blogs a 4 blog advantage. But it didn’t make much of a difference.
So how much more does the Left use Carlin’s “seven words” versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.
His methodology:
How did I get this result? I searched Google using the following format and recorded the page results that were returned:
site:xyz.com “search term 1″ OR “search term 2″ OR “search term 3″…
Now, not bad, I suppose. However, the 18:1 ratio is problematic as a descriptive statistic because it does not take into account the relative sizes of the blogs in question. To get a decent measure one would have to take into account the number of blog posts and comments. If I post 6 times a day and use 3 of the words in question that means that 50% of my posts in that period of time are profane, but if another blogger has 12 posts and uses those words 5 times, the percentage is 41.7%–so the first blog uses the words with greater frequency while the second blog has a higher absolute number of usages. This effect would be especially relevant for comments, as high-traffic blogs typically have hundreds and hundreds of comments which increases the potential chances of usages on those blogs. And what about blogs that do not have comments? You cannot reasonably compare DailyKos to InstaPundit in this study, despite the fact that they are both “big” blogs.
When engaging in comparisons, raw counting is rarely as helpful as one might think. Someone with a lot of time needs to construct a Blog Profanity Index that would account for posts v. comments and frequency of usage and that would weigh the different words (let’s face facts, some of the 7 are more profane than others and, in fact, one can say some of those words on TV these days–or even in normal conversation–but others are far more problematic in that regard).
However, the number is likely to be taken as gospel by some (for example here and here–indeed, InstaPundit uncritically accepts the results as well.).
At the end of the day it would hardly be a shocker if leftish blogs use more profanity that rightish ones–but even if that is the case, what does it prove? Further, does one have to use profanity to be insulting and rude? I think not.
Update: Some further experimentation calls the whole thing into question.
Technorati Tags: blogging, Blogosphere
March 1st, 2007 at 8:56 am
Not to mention that context matters. What if a blog is quoting Amanda Marcotte to illustrate a point about profanity?
March 1st, 2007 at 9:06 am
It seems that Huffington Post was in a no-win situation. If they had NOT deleted the comments, I’m sure someone would have criticized them for not deleting offensive comments.
March 1st, 2007 at 9:14 am
James: Yup.
Anon: also yup.
March 1st, 2007 at 9:32 am
1) it is contemptible to wish death on a fellow American because one has political differences with that person
Just out of curiosity, is it less contemptible to wish death on, let’s say, a Frenchman because he has different political views than you? Just asking.
March 1st, 2007 at 9:41 am
I really wasn’t trying to make any points about the relative value of persons based on nationality.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:08 am
Individual comments cannot prove a particular point but over time can a pattern of comments lead to certain conclusions? I think that is entirely possible. You mentioned two sites that over time have established enough of a pattern that you described them as generating “a panoply of ugliness”. Cherry picking day after day can lead to such conclusions (I’m not saying you cherry picked Dr. Taylor) and cherry picking can illustrate the overall tone of a blog or it’s comments section. Cherry picking to some could be sampling to others.
Certainly in day to day interactions with others we are often judged not by our average behavior but by our most extreme behavior. Those highs and lows are what really establish who we are and what we are about. I would venture it’s the same for blogs and the resident commenters.
The bad language issue is a pet peeve of mine. I curse with the best of them in the right circimstance but time and place is the key. In public discussions foul words are usually the refuge of the emotionally weak and intellectually weak. If you are going to the playground learn to play well with others. Sticking to the high road also has a tactical advatage as well as strategic advantage in dealing with others. Smarter people understand this.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:24 am
It may well say something about the given site. Indeed, there are sites I avoid because of said “panoply of ugliness” both on the left and the right.
The issue, however, is whether one overall ideological perspective is uglier than the other, and that has hardly been proven. That’s the issue of the debate as I see it.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:32 am
CPAC, Potty Mouth Bloggers, and the 10 Commandments
CPAC
The Conservative Political Action Conference is upon us. But I won’t be there. I was invited to blog from Blogger’s Row, as I’ve been since the first row in 2005, but it wouldn’t fit into my schedule this year. Too bad. L…
March 1st, 2007 at 10:51 am
South Park Conservatism, we hardly knew ye.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:53 am
[...] PoliBlog has a relatively good followup to this post at his site where he addresses some of the concerns mentioned or demonstrated below, including: cherry picking and comment/thread length skewing the results. [...]
March 1st, 2007 at 11:35 am
I agree totally. While I, too, am frequently stunned by the overtly foul language encountered in the blogosphere, the ability of a writer to avoid the Seven Dirty Words hardly makes that author “better”, ideologically, than those with fewer, or cruder, skills.
March 1st, 2007 at 12:41 pm
[...] Update III: Applying the test to Whitehouse.gov actually gives one 45 hits. However, actually finding any of the words in question in the docs is a difficulty (not that I spent a lot of time with the experiment). As such, it is well to treat all such search results with the proverbial grain of salt. Of course, that even further reinforces my skepticism from earlier. [...]
March 1st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Dr. Taylor,
Is it the ideological perspective that’s being examined or those who choose that ideology? Maybe I don’t understand the difference between ideological perspective vs ideology, is there a difference?
In a round about way I see this as an attempt to show the liberal ideology as more emotional and less rational thereby leading to adherents being more emotional and less rational. The evidence would then be the ratio of foul language being higher than the ratio in more conservative blogs and postings.
I have to admit those are my gut feelings. It is unfair of me to think like that but perhaps years of anecdotal evidence pushes a person to draw those conclusions.
So the questions as I see them are a) does the higher incidence of foul language reflect on the ideology? b) does the higher incidence of foul language only reflect on those who believe in that ideology, ie is the ideology blameless?
March 1st, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Let’s put it this way: part of my point is that anecdotal evidence really isn’t very helpful and in this kind of discussion one is swayed both by one’s own perspective ideologically speaking as well as one’s predisposition towards certain types of language.
My main point was that a raw count tells us nothing.
Beyond that even if leftish folks use those 7 words more thatn rightish folks, I am not sure that that really tells us that much.
For example, I can think of two of my friends who use profane/obscene words the most–both have Ph.D.s and one is on the rightish side and one is on the leftish side.
What does that tell me?
Not much.
March 1st, 2007 at 11:57 pm
before we clutch our collective pearls in collective disgust at the left, let’s take a look at newsbuckit’s actual process and data.
as i point out on skippy, while it was flattering to be labeled as one of the 18 biggest liberal blogs, there’s no traffic ranking in blogtopia and yes, i coined that phrase, that puts my blog anywhere above 500 in ranking.
even worse, i personally couldn’t believe skippy had 419 occurrences of swear words (because i have a pretty stringent approach to using swear words only for emphatic points or jokes, and usually substitute asterisks for vowels).
so i tried to reproduce his results, by using the same method he outlined in his piece.
my google search resuled in a mere 137 instances, less than 1/3 of what ishmael insists skippy had.
i also point out that he conveniently didn’t count protein wisdom written by jeff “slap your face with my c*ck” goldstein on the conservative side.
i would suggest that instead of defending the usage of swear words, the left start attack the right’s penchant for just making sh*t up.
March 2nd, 2007 at 7:48 am
[...] Blogtopia (that word was created by this guy) is (supposedly) self-policing and now a new characteristic is has come under the microscope: the use of vulgar language on blogs. Read James Joyner and Steven Taylor (who have other links as well). [...]
March 2nd, 2007 at 8:11 am
The notion that substituting asterisks for vowels makes words any less vulgar is sophomoric bullsh*t popular among various hypocritical @ssh0les. Same goes for intentionally misspelling them, fukwit.
I think the truth is that the left simply have more balls, and aren’t afraid to spell the words out, rather than play some nancy game.
(btw, I have no truck with skippy, just pointing out that spiteful words cut equally deeply, misspelled or not).