Shallow Netroots: Hypertext Links to Advocacy Organizations in Political Blogs

In 2002, a Weblog author coined the term ―netroots‖ — a combination of the words ―Internet‖ and ―grassroots‖ — to describe the use of political blogs as a tool to spur political activism and political organization.This study gathered data to determine how frequently the top three progressive and the top three conservative blogs use hypertext links to direct their readers to the Web sites of political advocacy organizations.The study coded 2,087 hypertext links on these six influential political blogs for seven consecutive days in January 2008, during the presidential primaries, to determine what percentage of hypertext links took readers to advocacy organizations.Only 5.7% (n = 119) of links on these blogs directed readers to political advocacy Web sites.Although there may be a netroots phenomenon, it has manifested itself not in political blogs, but in the Web sites and mass e-mail and texting lists of the candidates and their campaign operations.