Is the Blogosphere Inherently Negative?
Peter Vajda has written Robert Fuller to point out that several bloggers in the professional world have recently taken up the subject of negativity, and he has written his own essay on how this negativity is manifested in the blogosphere.
I’m curious as to whether there’s a widespread belief that the blogosphere is inherently negative since I personally have never had that impression. Therefore, I’m posting the Vajda essay here, and I invite everyone who reads this blog or otherwise deals with meta-analysis on the blogosphere to offer their views on whether there is a preponderance of negativity.
Here’s the first paragraph of the Vajda essay to give everyone a taste of the argument:
Social scientists, socioeconomists, and social psychologists are increasingly pointing to the fact that the social mood in the United States, and across the world’s culture and civilization is turning bad and that overall social mood is going to get a lot worse before improving. Research graphs and diagrams, such as the Elliot Wave Principle, underscore the finding that there is a natural ebb and flow of social mood (positive vs. negative) and that darker times, socially and politically, lie ahead of us, creating increased tension and negativity. Nowhere is this negative mood more evident than in the blogosphere where incivility, disrespect, meanness, bullying, and demeaning behavior rule the day, and the posts. What is it that accounts for this negativity among bloggers and what can be done to perhaps soothe and diminish their high degree of vitriol, rancor, meanness, incivility and disrespect?
Read the rest of the Vajda essay here.
