Ari Melber has written a great synthesis for The Nation about the new study “A Tale of Two Blogospheres” produced by a consortium of researchers from Harvard, Yale and Berkeley.

The study details the the structure (and resulting impact) of the left vs. right blogosphere or as they put it, “evidence of an association between ideological affiliation and the technologies, institutions, and practices of participation across political blogs.” This study completely coincides with the theories we lay out and the stories (and lessons learned) of Firedoglake, Feministing and Talking Points Memo that we detail out in our book Beyond The Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media.

Here are a few excerpts from Melber’s piece.

“One of the most striking findings is structural: liberal blogs provide audience participation options at triple the rate of conservative sites. That means visitors to progressive sites are more empowered to contribute entire posts to the “front page,” and more likely to have their contributions or comments highlighted before potentially hundreds of thousands of readers.

According to the authors, the netroots’ early embrace of deeper participation platforms, coupled with progressive bloggers interest in mobilizing fundraising and specific actions, helped prime the tactics and habits that supported the Democrats’ later web dominance (see chart).

The survey data does show that progressive bloggers were far more demanding of their readers.

One out of three liberal sites made direct fundraising pitches, and almost half asked readers to take some political action, according to a section of the study analyzing the top sixty-five blogs. On the right, however, only one out of twenty blogs pushed fundraising, and fewer than one out of five issued “calls to action.”

In the book, we tell the “impact story” of Firedoglake in a chapter titled “Assemble the Progressive Choir.” It demonstrates how FDL has successfully built a site that combines analysis, great acts of journalism, transparency, direct relationships between the bloggers and the community, a community forum, calls for action and fundraising (for the site itself and for political campaigns) to become one of the most successful progressive political blogs today.

I hope that both the blogosphere and the rapidly evolving legacy progressive media take heed from both the study and our book and continues with the much needed experimentation and implementation of community engagement, building and mobilization that will continue to build the overall impact of their journalism and messaging. It’s good for business. It’s good for impact.

This image summarizes the significant differences between the left and right blogosphere analyzed in the new study, “A Tale of Two Blogospheres.” (Click for larger image.)