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In February 2007, the ascension and decline of two women political bloggers garnered national attention, when just days after being hired to blog for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards they were forced to resign. Popular liberal bloggers, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon (on.com/) in which Marcotte wrote, “Reasonable people,” I thought, “can tell the difference between a personal blog post and those I'll write for the campaign”(Marcotte, 2007). Yet this was not the case.
The above narrative illustrates the public fate of two popular feminist political bloggers. It underlines the scrutiny and challenges they faced while working for the Edwards campaign. Marcotte explains,
What I also failed to understand was how much McEwan and I would stick out. I was aware that I didn't exactly fit the image people have of bloggers who join campaigns—the stereotype being 30-something nerdy young white men who wear khakis and obsess over crafting their Act Blue lists. I wasn't aware that not fitting the image would attract so much negative attention. In fact, I mostly saw this all as a baby step in the direction of diversity, since McEwan and I differed from the stereotype mostly by being female and by being outspoken feminists (Marcotte, 2007).
Whether or not the challenges these women faced are attributable to gender or their ideological position is debatable. This incident drew substantial attention in the mainstream media and the blogosphere; it only partially describes women political bloggers’ experiences, however.
To date few studies examine the role of women bloggers within the realm of politics, public policy and current events. Filling the gaps in the literature, this research asks: what is unique about women political bloggers and how do women political bloggers use their blogs for purposes related to politics and participation? Based on in-depth interviews conducted in October 2006 with 20 women, this research attempts to identify the demographics of these bloggers, about which topics these women blog, and how they use their blogs in the context of politics. It also seeks to identify what challenges, if any, women political bloggers face, and whether they experience exclusion and discrimination in the blogosphere.