It has been an unusual few weeks in the Scottish political blogosphere. Already, a number of bloggers had apparently lost motivation and were openly wondering if they should continue. Since then, a number of blogs have closed down, apparently due to external pressures.

Firstly, Wardog was closed down after journalists from a number of major newspapers sought to write stories about it. The angle was that the blog was pretty close to the bone and potentially offensive. Was it acceptable behaviour for an employee of a university?

Then, the author of the Universality of Cheese was “outed” as Michael Russell’s office manager. Mark MacLachlan had to close down his blog and quit his job. The added twist to the story was that Michael Russell, an SNP Government minister, has been a major advocate of new media such as blogging within the Scottish Government. It remains to be seen if this scandal has an adverse impact on the admirable aim of using new web technologies in government.

At the weekend, Subrosa opted to close her blog, apparently out of fear that she was going to be “outed” as well. As the weekend passed and the Sunday newspapers were published without event, the blog has since re-opened.

[Update: Please see Subrosa's comment below for a clarification on the information in the above paragraph.]

The author of Advanced Media Watch appears to have decided to keep his blog closed. Meanwhile, even Scotland’s top SNP blogger, Jeff Breslin of SNP Tactical Voting, was also involved in a minor stooshie.

I have seen it written by more than one person that it feels as though the Scottish blogosphere is “under attack”. Maybe under attack is putting it too strongly, but certainly some big giants are peering into this particular goldfish bowl just now.

There have been some interesting articles about the blogosphere by journalists lately. Iain Macwhirter has waded in once again, with a rather sensible analysis. Joan McAlpine also penned this interesting take on Scottish political blogging.

But as far as the scandal goes, it appears as though not all blogs are affected. It is a sub-set of blogs. The common thread is easy to spot. All of the bloggers involved are SNP supporters.

There are two possible theories as to why. One explanation — the one favoured by nationalists — that the “Labour establishment” in the Scottish media has stitched them up.

More likely is the idea that this is an effect of the “cybernat” phenomenon. Some of the bloggers who have been put under the microscope over the past few weeks could not be compared with the cybernats. But some were worse than others, and certainly one or two of them sailed too close to the wind.

Those who sailed the closest had to shut their blogs down. I felt that some of these blogs, in their better moments, were lacking in rigour. In their worst moments… well, the news reports have let you know about that. I should point out that this description by no means applies to all of the blogs that have been caught up in the recent fracas.

There may be a temptation among some to put this down to the fact that bloggers can be anonymous. That was certainly the conclusion of Iain Macwhirter. However, the cybernat phenomenon does not have much to do with anonymity (although that is an aspect of it, and apparently sock puppet accounts are rife).

But the fact is that the person who ran Wardog, the first blog to take a hit, was not anonymous. His name was displayed on his blog, in addition to his occupation and the fact that he was a lecturer! Clearly he was not ashamed of the way he presented his opinions, even if he had to relent when challenged about it. Nor is Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting anonymous (although it is totally unfair to compare his rather minor incident with the closures of the other blogs).

There is no doubt that the ability to be anonymous on the internet is abused by many, including a high proportion of cybernats. But there can be sound reasons for wanting to be anonymous. There may be those whose blogs are innocuous, but who prefer to remain anonymous in case it upsets their employer or someone close to them.

Others may blog anonymously as whistle-blowers of a sort. Think of PC David Copperfield or Civil Serf. A different set may like to blog for entertainment, but prefer to keep their privacy, like Abby Lee / Zoe Margolis or Belle de Jour.

The problem that has hit the Scottish blogosphere in the shape of cybernats is not as a result of anonymity. The problem is the fact that some SNP activists just get too excited for their own good. SNP activists in general are known for being particularly boisterous, excitable and even aggressive. On the internet, some become absolutely feral.

As I have said before, I have absolutely no doubt that the cybernats are a very small minority of SNP activists. It is a tiny proportion who get a bit too excited and don’t properly think through the consequences of their actions. It goes without saying that some of Scotland’s best and most clear-thinking bloggers are SNP supporters.

But the cybernat issue has bubbled under for too long. For a couple of years the phenomenon has been doing the SNP a great deal of damage in terms of its image. Perhaps it was easily dismissed as the hidden nocturnal ramblings of a small few in the comments section of a dying newspaper’s website. Maybe blogging was not mainstream enough for it to concern them.

It’s different when Sunday newspapers start to take notice and write articles about it though. And not just a one-off — a sustained burst targeting multiple blogs.

Now it is said that Alex Salmond has asked SNP activists to shape up and play nicely online. You just wonder why he hasn’t done it before now, when it was too late.

While some seem to believe that the Scottish political blogosphere is “under attack”, and that this can only be a bad thing, the truth is more nuanced than that. This is an overdue weeding-out of the dreg-ends of the gutter of the blogosphere.

Bloggers should take this not as a threat. It is a warning, but also an opportunity. As Will Patterson says:

…we can raise our game, answer the charges with the positive, celebrate the good things we get up to and in so doing, make the critics look like muppets, simply by proving them wrong.

Or, as someone else put it to me, the blogosphere will be “leaner, cleaner and keener” from now on. It is all about bloggers engaging their brains a bit more and becoming a more savvy about what they say and do. Overall, the blogosphere will be stronger in the end.

Other interesting takes

As you expect with a story about blogging, bloggers have been all over it. Here are some of my favourites:

• Bloggers’ dilemma – Go Lassie Go
• Night of the hard drives – SNP Tactical Voting
• Blogging: ex mea sententia – Ideas of Civilisation
• Ghosts of blogs past – J. Arthur MacNumpty

I was sorry to read that Scottish Unionist has decided to stop updating his blog.

I know from email correspondence that he has, from time to time, thought about the future of his blog. Now he appears to have decided to call it a day for good.

What a great shame that is. Scottish Unionist did a fine job of exposing the rotten nature of nationalism. His eviscerations of the borderline illiterate Cybernats who pollute the Scottish blogosphere were excellent.

This may have led to the blog been a bit one-note and too negative. Plus, the knuckle-dragging nature of Cybernats is somewhat self-evident. But the case cannot be made too often.

The personal experience that Scottish Unionist has gone through while facing up to the aggressive nationalists has been truly shocking in some cases. It spoke volumes of Scottish Unionist as a person that he always conducted his debates with dignity, treating his opponents with respect — much more than a Cybernat could ever achieve.

I echo the sentiments of Jeff. I doubt that the Cybernats really need to be tackled — they discredit their ideology enough with their own words.

But Scottish Unionist was more or less the only person who frequently visited the constitutional issue, at a time when we could be facing a fundamental referendum in the next couple of years. Perhaps the rest of us should step up to the plate.

I was delighted when Scottish Unionist asked if I would write a guest piece for his blog earlier this year. You can still read my piece about a vision of a federalism in the UK.

One thing that really stuck me about the leaflets from Ukip and the BNP for the recent European Parliamentary election was the fact that they were stuffed full of cheesy patriotic symbols — Union Flags, Spitfires, Winston Churchills and so on. Any electorate in the world will have a certain contingent who are enticed by nationalistic rhetoric at the expense of good policies.

In England, Ukip and the BNP have cornered this market pretty well, with the English Democrats also doing a good job of it. One thing that these three parties have in common — aside from their narrow nationalism — is the fact that they are all pretty vile.

Here in Scotland the nationalist vote is completely mopped up by the SNP. We all know that the SNP uses national symbols which appeal to base instincts which may entice certain types of voters. This gets up some people’s noses, including mine.

But the SNP have done a grand job by keeping a lid on the nastier side of nationalism. For this we can be thankful. All though there is, without a doubt, a nastier side to some of their supporters — as we have seen with the Cybernats — you won’t find these types of views coming from the mainstream of the party.

Indeed, the party is at pains to promote a progressive type of nationalism. They embrace civic nationalism. They reject ideas of Scottishness defined in terms of ethnicity. They avoid anti-English approaches. And we can be especially thankful that violent methods do not form part of the nationalist agenda in Scotland.

This is combined with progressive policies, including an enlightened approach to immigration and a positive agenda towards Europe. While in many other parts of the world nationalism may be equated with right-wing or fascist concepts, the SNP combine a nationalist ideology with a broadly centrist agenda.

Whatever the motives of the voters, the SNP’s form of nationalism is a great deal more tolerant — and tolerable — than the forms of nationalism we see from the likes of Ukip, the BNP, the French National Front, the Movement for a Better Hungary, or any number of extreme parties across the world.

Richard Thomson recently described the SNP as being part of “unquestionably the best behaved nationalist movement in the world”. Looking at the European election results and seeing where nationalist votes seem to go, it’s easy to agree with him.

Part one of this article was published yesterday

Further evidence that Iain Macwhirter is struggling to see beyond the model of the media comes from the fact that the blogs he cites as “very good and intelligent” are both offerings from the media. Paul Krugman’s blog is funded by the New York Times while Robert Peston’s is run by the BBC.

Interestingly, the one he criticises — aside from Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes — is by established journalist Alex Massie, whose blog is hosted by The Spectator. (Incidentally, Alex Massie’s evisceration of Iain Macwhirter’s original article is well worth a read.) There is still no sign that Mr Macwhirter will deign to read the output of someone who isn’t sharing his ivory tower.

He also makes the point about bloggers being geeks, citing the fact that a lot of it relies on the dark art of SEO. He says that “there is a science to blogging”. This may be so, certainly for the larger blogs out there. But let’s be clear about this — you don’t need to know SEO to blog. You just have to write. The barriers to entry are incredibly low. I started blogging when I was at school and it was years before I even learnt what SEO was, never mind begin to implement the techniques. It didn’t stop me from blogging. You can learn as you go along. Or you can choose not to, if you wish.

Whatever, it is a hell of a lot more accessible than the media. How do I go about getting a column in a newspaper? The short answer is that I can’t. Want to be a blogger? Sign up to Wordpress.com or Blogger and you’ve already made it.

Where Iain Macwhirter is probably closest to being right is in his point about personal attacks on the blogosphere. It is true that there is rather too much of this. But it usually comes from the same four or five bloggers, and I don’t read any of them.

Sometimes people (including, I confess, me) bemoan the fact that there is still no Scottish Guido Fawkes. But in a way we should be relieved that this brash and divisive model is not replicated in the Scottish political scene.

The Scottish blogosphere is actually a fairly pleasant place, as has been noted by IoC. Will Patterson, in his letter to The Herald, pointed out that you can read about the great blogging that goes on every week on Scottish Roundup.

I like to think that the Roundup has helped foster a friendly atmosphere in the Scottish blogosphere. We do, of course, have our differences. But that is what you expect in a debate. By and large, we are a respectful and friendly bunch. Despite our political differences, I think there is a clear Scottish political blogging community. A fair bunch of us will be attending a meet-up later today. And it always amazes me that even those with the strongest political views can put their differences aside and give rival viewpoints a fair airing when they are invited to edit the Scottish Roundup. Stephen Glenn is a typical example of this.

There is, of course, the phenomenon of the Cybernats, which is a problem. But it’s not a problem with blogging. The truly swivel-eyed will never find a decent platform for themselves on the blogosphere. That is because it is too easy to ignore a bad blogger — you simply don’t read the blog.

Where Cybernattery is a problem is in comments. As I have pointed out a number of times before, the nature of comments is very different to the nature of blogging. I suspect Iain Macwhirter’s impression of blogging comes mainly from the comments to his own pieces, which is a shame because they are no doubt awful. He says, “This has now become institutionalised in the form of the blog, which is an extension of this kind of citizen journalism.” But it is a major mistake to assume that bloggers and commenters are the same people, or even vaguely close relatives.

As Macwhirter himself points out, bloggers want to be read. But as I have noted, it is easy to ignore a blogger by simply not reading. So the truly awful commenters would never succeed as bloggers because they simply will not get read and won’t make any impact.

That is precisely why websites like The Herald, Scotsman.com, Comment is free, the BBC’s Have Your Say, Digg and YouTube suffer from having terrible comments. Because these are huge websites, commenters know they are guaranteed an audience. Unlike a blogger, they don’t have to build an audience by producing quality content. They already have the spotlight they crave so that they can spout out their nonsense. Bloggers produce a higher-quality product because they need to come up with the goods or people will not read. Commenters believe they will have people reading anyway.

That is not, of course, a criticism of all comments. Small and medium-sized blogs generally have great comment sections, and I am lucky to be able to count this blog among the medium-sized blogs that generally have thriving and friendly comments sections. It is the big media sites that attract bad commenters like files on a poop.

To tie all the loose ends together, the point — as everyone agrees — is that the media landscape is changing. Kezia Dugdale has a good overview of what’s going on.

A recent piece in the Sunday Herald suggested that my blogs get the sort of readership that a local newspaper can expect. That was news to me, and it rather sums up just how different the world of the media is becoming. While the blogosphere grows and grows, the likes of The Scotsman and The Herald are struggling to scrape together enough coppers to fund next week’s editions.

This makes the way the media approaches the web all-important. Johnston Press’s decision to rip the perfectly adequate Scotsman.com to shreds and implement their own shaky template has effectively put a nail in their own coffin. Traffic has halved since they took over. The Herald’s web presence has always been dire, and signs for the future are not good.

Given this state of affairs, the relationship between blogging and the media will become ever-more important. Everyone in this arena is still feeling their way around in an uncertain new world, and everyone will make mistakes along the way. The media could be helped significantly if their most high-profile commentators had a modicum of awareness of what the real strengths of blogging actually are.

I was sorry to read that Kezia Dugdale has ‘retired’ from blogging. Jeff has the full details and an interview with Kezia herself about the matter.

It’s a blow to the Scottish political blogosphere for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Kezia was a great blogger in her own right. But perhaps more significantly she was one of the few Labour bloggers in a field that is increasingly dominated by nationalists.

She was not quite the only Labour blogger. There are a few others, but mostly centred around Edinburgh Council — with Ewan Aitken and Andrew Burns standing out.

For a focus on national politics though (either in the Scotland- or UK-wide sense), Kezia Dugdale was the one everyone would visit for the Labour view. Just as you’d visit Stephen Glenn for the Lib Dem point of view, Scottish Tory Boy for the Conservatives and James at Two Doctors for the Green view, Kezia was the Scottish Labour blogger.

Of course, one of those, Scottish Tory Boy, closed his blog last month — but he returned the following week! Kezia’s exit, though, does feel rather more final.

I have long admired Kezia for her blog. In her interview with Jeff, she makes a point about anonymity in blogging. She seems to believes that bloggers should not be anonymous. I happen to disagree with her on that matter. But there is no doubt that it would have been a safer option for her to adopt a snappy pseudonym and let rip. Instead, she had her name up there in big bold letters and even had a photograph. You’ve got to take your hat off to her for being principled enough to make her identity so clear.

No doubt this affected the tone and content of the blog. The aspect of Kezia Dugdale’s blog that I liked the least was the fact that it toed the Labour Party line rather too much for my liking. I wonder if, as the blogosphere’s best-known Labour face, she felt obliged to stick up for Labour a bit too much. Perhaps with one eye on the future.

At the same time, that all undoubtedly made her a target for cybernats. There is, as Kezia points out, a poisonous streak in certain parts of the blogosphere. As the primary voice for a Labour Party that is currently deeply unpopular, Kezia Dugdale was always going to be at the receiving end of some pretty robust, negative stuff. Just another reason why I was amazed at how she continued blogging regardless.

I think Kezia is wrong, though, when she says this about blogging:

…it’s a very seedy environment – the vast majority of bloggers operate anonymously. And with anonymity, accountability completely evaporates…
Blogging is no longer, in my view, a proper vehicle for debate. It’s been saturated by partisan venom and that can be quite debilitating.
I’ll write a post and then 95% of the comments that follow will be negative. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong every single time…

She is not totally wrong. But in my view, the problem is not with blogging per se. It is with comments. As I have argued here, people who run their own blogs tend to be articulate, reasoned people. The reason for that, as Will Patterson points out, is:

Sub-standard blogs, full of rubbish that’s plucked out of thin air, just won’t get read. Or they’ll get read a couple of times then people will move on. So weaker blogs get isolated, while stronger blogs gain a following. That way, every blogger is accountable to their readers.

In the comments, though, it is a different matter. Some people post in the comments simply because that way they are guaranteed an audience. Rather than make the effort to set up your own place — which people might not visit — to express your views, why not go some place else where you will definitely be heard? Of course, not all commenters are like this. But it is a sad fact of comments, that some people hang out there simply because they’re not good enough to sustain a blog of their own.

Luckily, this blog doesn’t have a big problem with comments. Of course, like all of us, I have received terrible, offensive comments that I simply couldn’t publish. But it’s not a regular problem that I have to deal with day-in, day-out as some bloggers no doubt have to. But it is a problem that the blogosphere as a whole has. It isn’t enjoyable to surf around Scottish websites and be confronted time and time again with swivel-eyed cybernattery.

I don’t like to blame this completely on anonymity. As I hinted at above, I think that there are perfectly valid reasons to wish to remain anonymous — or pseudonymous anyway. I certainly don’t think it’s feasible to expect all bloggers to go around using their real names all the time. But the comments issue is for another time (though I’ve already written about it here).

Whatever, I am quite sad that Kezia Dugdale has hung up her keyboard. A lot of bloggers need to take a break every so often, and a lot of the time bloggers on hiatus come back after a while. Blogging is slightly addictive. Once you’ve got used to using your little platform, it is difficult to stop using it forever. So hopefully Kezia will return to the blogosphere one day.

In the meantime, there is a huge void in the Scottish blogosphere. Who is going to stick up for Labour now?