Video of Jane Hamsher's and my blog seminar in Sweden last week

The Swedish Social Democratic Party has posted the entire video of the panel discussion that Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake and I had in Sweden this past week at the Almedal political conference. It's an hour and a half in full, and the topic was "The blogs and the Obama election." We had a standing-room-only audience that was flowing out the door - it was pretty amazing, especially considering the heat (the stage, where I was sitting, had to be a good 90 degrees, thus my shorts).

It starts in Swedish for a minute or two (including a few seconds of a bad connection), but then switches into English. We discussed how the Obama campaign did or didn't work with the blogs during the campaign and now, the role of blogging vis-a-vis the corporate media, fundraising online (for blogs and candidates), how and why the political blogosphere came about, a few of our top examples of online blog advocacy, and much more.

I provide a table of contents to the video, so you can jump around and see what you want, below.



I've created a table of contents for the video:

3:46 Jane's intro
7:18 John's intro
9:40 Jane diagrams how the blogs came about
23:08 John on the Obama campaign's blog relations
27:31 Jane and John on Congress' blog outreach
33:00 John on where the blogs' power comes from
35:00 Jane on how laws are made in the US, and how blogs can influence them?
40:30 John on a citizen's ability to influence politics in the US
45:46 Jane on how the blogs in the US are funded, and how the blogs raise money for candidates (e.g., ActBlue) and for fighting specific issues
53:00 John on the blogs' relationship with the corporate media

Audience questions:

57:22 Is there any difference between blogs and the media? Employee Free Choice Act, are the blogs involved in that debate? (John first responds to the media question, including talking about the Obama DOMA brief brouhaha, and Jane responds to the EFCA question at 1:03:00)
1:04:22 Jane on where the trends are going in future years?
1:08:53 John on whether American blog activism be repeated in other countries, and whether blogs are media?
1:10:42 Jane on the importance of blogger expertise on a particular subject
1:11:20 Jane and John on blogs not having editors, who are they accountable to?
1:13:48 Is this instant-coffee-democracy? Meaning, blogs only deal with the hot issue of the day - how do you deal with bigger, longer-term issues, issues that need more focus than just a few posts when the issue is hot? Jane responds first, then John responds at 1:18:21, and Jane jumps back in at 1:21:30
1:23:35 What's the difference between having your own blog and writing for a blog gateway, like Huffington Post.