Over on Balkinization, Jack Balkin links to a new study about political polarization in the blogospher (Evidence of Cyberbalkanization?). The 16-page study by Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance can be found here: The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog [PDF]. The report's conclusion?:

In our study we witnessed a divided blogosphere: liberals and conservatives linking primarily within their separate communities, with far fewer cross-links exchanged between them. This division extended into their discussions, with liberal and conservative blogs focusing on different news articles, topics, and political figures. An interesting pattern that emerged was that conservative bloggers were more likely to link to other blogs: primarily other conservative blogs, but also some liberal ones. But while the conservative blogosphere was more densely linked, we did not detect a greater uniformity in the news and topics discussed by conservatives.

Balkin wonders:

Is this inconsistent with my previous arguments about the blogosphere? Yes, but only in part. There are two questions: one is whether we will find ideological polarization in the blogosphere. This study says that we will. The second is whether the blogosphere (and the Internet generally) causes or facilitates this polarization, and whether the polarization that it causes or facilitates is substantially greater or more worrisome than polarization that occurs through other mass media. On this second question, the evidence remains mixed. It is still quite possible that linking and the culture of linking creates marginally more exposure to divergent ideas than people otherwise experience in real space, and thus, that it is not a contributing cause of existing political polarization. That is to say, the Internet creates two opposite effects. One is ease of searching for and finding information that confirms what you already believe. That would facilitate and enhance polarization. The other is serendipitious exposure to information that you disagree with or that you weren't looking for. That would work in the opposite direction. The question is which effect dominates the other. [link in original]

Jack is right about the second question, but I'm not really all that sure about the first question after having read this study. Are we going to find political polarization in the blogosphere? If the populace as a whole is polarized, of course we will. I would also suspect that we would find a higher degree of polarization than the general population as those who are more passionate would likely have more incentive to blog about their positions and passion tends to be found in the polarized extremes. So, of course there is polarization in the blogosphere. Human beings naturally tend to associate themselves with others with whom they agree.

The question, I think, is what is the baseline for this polarization? Sure, conservative and liberal bloggers tend to link to each other more than their ideological opposites. But how often did you find The Nation referencing the National Review before the internet? Is the polarization of the blogosphere any greater than the polarization of the political news periodicals of a couple of decades ago? What can we conclude about the blogosphere as a medium as compared to other mediums? Does it foster polarization or not? And what about the long tail?

This data is intriguing, but it isn't particularly clear what it is saying or if it says much at all.