Cyber tribe: The rhetorical implications of the Daily kos political filter blog community

Abstract

My thesis analyzes the ways in which blogs are changing the accumulation and exchange
of knowledge both within and outside of the blogosphere. To this end, I closely examine
the features and activities of the blog site Daily Kos and use these observations to extend
the orality-vs.-literacy theories of Walter Ong and the media theories (particularly that of
de- and retribalization) of Marshall McLuhan. My application of ideas presented by
these rhetoricians, together with more recent Internet research that has addressed blog
analysis in terms of knowledge-formation and intellectual authority, helps bring greater
clarity to a dynamic and complex phenomenon: the impact of political filter blogs'
rhetorical and communicative structures upon media and, by extension, upon American
society. I achieve this by demonstrating that the continued existence of Daily Kos
depends upon the interplay of literate and oral factors as much within individual
conversations as within the unified tribal entity. Ultimately, my evaluation of Daily Kos
suggests that high-participation media-blogs and their offshoots-are shifting
independent judgment and group consciousness into a new balance.

Date of Award	2008
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	Eastern Illinois University
Supervisor	Terri A. Fredrick (Supervisor)