I just sent over the final draft of my paper on blogging over to my co-author for review, and now I’m free to return to the blogosphere.

For the past several months, I have plugging away with my friend and co-author, Toni Pole, on a paper on the politics of blogging for the American Political Science Conference which will be in two weeks in Chicago. Our panel should be great fun. In addition to myself and Toni, Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell will be presenting their own paper on how blogging influences the media. Their paper should be a great complement to our own which looks at a different angle of blogging. We were interested in the political dialogue that results from blogging between other bloggers and their readers. Is blogging a new form of political participation, similar to attending a political rally or signing a petition? We found that it was. Bloggers link obsessively to each other within posts and on their blogrolls. Most had comments sections which allowed for further dialogue. And there was some movement by bloggers to more directly influence politics by encouraging their readers to vote, to contact an elected official, to attend rallies, to contribute to a political campaign, etc… I’ll have a link up in a couple of weeks, so that everyone can take a look at the paper and give us feedback.

And since my last name will no longer be a secret, let me post it here first. It’s McKenna.

In addition to our papers, the panel will also feature commentary by other esteemed bloggers, Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette, Mark Kleiman, and Andrew Sullivan. Cass Sunstein will be the voice of reason as the discussant of the panel. And there will be sure to be other bloggers in the audience, as well.

UPDATE: Dan has a post today on how the White House staff are blog fans.