Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Paul Musgrave Dot Com: What do readers want?

Paul Musgrave's summary of the what and why of blogging is very good. Thanks, Josh.

...because groups of blog readers already share a common paradigm, they do not care about the explanation: They will deduce the explanation for themselves from the shared Weltanschauung. Instead, they want to be told what particular incidents to be upset about. Hence Instapundit readers are in a constant state of agitation about one set of outrages, while Tom Tomorrow readers are upset by some other set. Even objective descriptions of administration policy will be completely different between groups working from different worldviews (a straight application of Kuhnian theory) because the salient facts will appear different to each since each group works from a distinct value system that they are not seeking to overthrow.

I particularly like the taxonomy...
SSSSS (Somebody Stupid Said Something Stupid) and PASWO (Pointing At Something With Outrage).
Love it.

[5/29/09 I removed the Musgrave link because it now goes to a porn site.]

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