It’s a bit late, but I’d like to discuss the CPS’s interesting panel on blogging at the Tory conference, with Iain Dale, Robert Colvile of the Telegraph, Paul Morris of Microsoft and the Shadow Culture secretary and blogger Jeremy Hunt. It was well presented and interesting to hear points of view – though it would have been nice to have a pessimist in there as well. I’ve written about blogs and their important effects before now, though ironically this is the first time I’ve actually blogged about blogs. I’m reasonably enthusiastic about the impact of blogs in politics, although as the whole point of a blog is someone saying what they want to say unmediated by editors etc, what’s to oppose?

I had to catch a train, so had no time to hang around and discuss stuff over the canapés and fino vino, but four points occurred which I’d like, belatedly, to air.

First, the point was made that 616 MPs didn’t blog. That’s sad, but there is a problem here, a problem I share, which is that blogging is not mandated as part of the job. As an academic, what I am paid to do is produce refereed journal articles, not to use alternative methods of communication, however effective. If MPs are to be bloggers en masse they should be rewarded for their blogging, or alternatively it should be made a condition of employment.

I think it would be a great idea. One severe problem with the Tories’ localism agenda is the prevalence of the national media, from which most people get their political information. A blog by one’s own MP would be a splendid way of checking out what difference he or she makes at the local level, and keep one in touch with the often arcane ins and outs of local politics. And if the local Tory MP or candidate blogs, that would force the opposition to follow suit, which would be no bad thing.

Second, it was not mentioned that blogs will be such a valuable resource for future historians, who can use them to watch opinion unfold minute by minute. I have just written a book with Andrew Denham of Nottingham University on Tory leadership elections, with a long section on the 2005 contest, for which conservativehome.com was absolutely essential.

Third, one point not addressed was the danger in online discourse of people gathering information from a few trusted and biased sources and thereby only getting positive feedback (racists only reading racist sites, liberals only liberal sites and so on). Cass Sunstein warned against this in his book Republic 2.0; I used to oppose Sunstein, but recanted to an extent at least in my own book inequality.com after looking at the sources of political violence. It is a danger, and the excellent network analysis work of people like Lada Adamic of the University of Michigan has shown that in the States at least there is very little dialogue between tightly clustered groups of blogs; Republicans link to Republicans, Democrats to Democrats. And nutcases to nutcases.

Fourth, a bit of pedantry, but it’s very noticeable how people are misusing the term “wisdom of crowds.” OK, it’s a slogan, but it does mean something quite specific, which is the accuracy of an aggregation of opinion of a large number of heterogeneous people. It is not just everyone having their say. The method of aggregation provides the wisdom. Google aggregates opinion (expressed by links to pages), so a Google search exploits the wisdom of crowds. Wikipedia aggregates opinion (via a small editing team, talk pages and a series of editing rules), and so produces its sometimes quirky but not inaccurate articles.

On the other hand, Iain Dale’s blog followed by 900 comments is not the wisdom of crowds. It is the wisdom of Iain Dale (not inconsiderable, of course), followed by a cacophony. There is no meaningful aggregation of opinion, just a listing, and it might also be hard to show that the commenters were sufficiently heterogeneous.

That’s a criticism neither of the estimable Mr Dale, nor of the value of the comments, but let’s not call everything a crowd does wise. Wisdom emerges from a process, not from a cacophony.