Politico-geek

18 Jul 2008 | 08:08 pm | Category: Society

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An intellectual geek, self-confessed nerd, soon-to-be online-marketing-success-story, professional blogger and family man; David Risley could quite easily be described as Tampa’s “Mr Tech”.

“David Risley is an internet entrepreneur and professional technology blogger. With about 10 years of experience in this field, David has a solid and practical understanding of the web and what works. He is the founder and President of PC Media, Inc., a Tampa-Bay based company active in internet media publishing.

David’s most popular web project is PCMECH.COM, a large technology blog visited by around 250,000 people monthly. David, along with a team of independent writers, covers the world of technology including hardware, software, internet business, mobile, the Internet and social media.” - Quoted from David’s own blog: DavidRisley.com. http://www.davidrisley.com/about/

Recently, in an entry posted 15th July 2008 to be exact, he posted what appears to be a one-off foray into politics. http://www.davidrisley.com/2008/07/15/bloggers-for-obama-lemmings-for-something-shiny/

Using his excellent flowingly-articulate writing-style he managed to keep the coverage to as level a playing-field as possible, showing very little if any of his personal political preference, yet still succeeding in giving the mass-ranks of pro-Obama bloggers a flea in the ear for their one-sided biased coverage of Barack Obama’s political campaign.

Did David really keep the playing field level though, and did he, a professional tech blogger, inadvertently take a step into territory where the nerd-angels fear to tread? His second paragraph starts off:”We’re in the election season and that means we’re seeing lots of politics online. Since I follow social media, I can clearly [tell] which of the candidates seems to be the favorite of the blogosphere: Barack Obama.”

OK so much for proof-reading; but ignoring an honest accidental mistake in leaving a single word out; does the above indicate any political preference or bias? It could be loosely construed if this passage is taken by itself ignoring the rest of the article that by his mention only of Obama he sets a biased tone for the underlying theme.

However in reality we have to take the post as a whole and analyse the bigger picture.Further down he shows a more balanced approach when inculcating both candidates. : He states:”I have no doubt Barack Obama is a good man. I have no reason not to like him. But, when I see bloggers so blindly vouch for the guy, and so eagerly blame Bush for anything and everything and find every possible fault in John McCain…”

Is this really balanced though, or does it have a supportive slant for McCain? By itself perhaps; although once again we must look at the bigger picture. Let’s do just that from a statistical point of view:-

Mentioning of Candidates

Obama: 7 mentions

McCain: 1 mention

Can any conclusion be drawn from this? I wouldn’t say so despite the repeated mentions of Obama: After all; that is part of the overall theme: Bloggers’ documentation of Obama’s campaign in exclusion of and to the detriment of, McCain’s.

The picture used: Jesus Obama: Satire? Insult? Tactical insertion? Make up your own mind on that: I’m unable to ascertain which, although I strongly suspect satire.

Overall it appears that David Risley has done an extremely good job of maintaining a viewpoint of neutrality despite his political convictions while covering this topic: An achievement which is rather commendable.What are David Risley’s political convictions? I have no idea honestly; and even if I did know this, the fact that I revealed them in this article of mine would lead to a distortedly-biased view of his words by the readers.

He concludes with the words:”I’m not a political blogger and I’m not going to start. I follow tech, not politics. But, as a professional blogger who wants to see blogging recognized as the profession it is, I do not want to see bloggers as a whole turn into blind lapdogs for the latest shiny political figure…”

- All-in-all a quick dip into the edges of the political quagmire out of partial-necessity using the correct safety-harness and coming out completely unscathed. This demonstrates resilience and the mark of a talented writer: There aren’t a lot of bloggers out there that could even do this; let alone in such a manner. If I were running a “Blogger of the Month Award” then I feel that this post would be a very strong front runner at this time, and could easily end up winning first prize.