Political Activism: Barriers to Participation

As I began my ethnographic research into political activism on the Internet, I decided it would be interesting - and important for promoting intellectual diversity - to explore both ends of the political spectrum. I.e., I'm participating in extreme left-wing communities and extreme right-wing communities in order to compare and contrast the ways in which they communicate online.

To start, I identified a few celebrity-like activists on Facebook, Twitter and Google. (E.g., Vicki Mckenna, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, John Stewart, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, etc.)

From there, I looked into the recommended resources on their websites or personality-pages to determine which communities I wanted to participate in.

As an initial post, before my ethnographic research intensifies, I want to high light one significant observation: membership, participation and communication within these online communities has a high barrier to entry.

While most of the communities claim to facilitate easy and open communication, it's not always the case. For example, I joined one conservative community that lets interested users make an account, blog, comment and write "diary posts," which are longer, well-researched pieces. According to the site, the process works as follows:

"RedState’s day to day efforts are led by its Editor, Erick Erickson, and a talented and largely volunteer team of front page contributors. Anyone, however, can write at RedState. That makes RedState unique among right of center sites. Sign up for an account and you too can engage in the comments and post your own user diaries. The best stuff gets voted on by the community and the best of the best gets put on the front page for the world to see."

It was easy to make a user name and account, but I ran into trouble while navigating the various information outlets. On the one hand, I could make short blog posts and have them published immediately. On the other hand, I could make my private thoughts public through the "My Diary" section. In order to publish a post in your diary, however, it must first be approved by a moderator and then resubmitted for publishing.

All of these seemed easy enough on the surface, but at a very basic level it was difficult because a working knowledge of WordPress was required. Luckily, I'm familiar with the platform, but I have to ask: are the majority of people looking to post on this site well-versed in content management technologies such as WordPress? To me, this seems like an extreme barrier entry.

Moreover, my three Diary entries are still pending review. The focus of my entries were very relevant and newsworthy 1-2 weeks ago, but now... Who cares? There are other relevant, more timely issues, that are worth talking about. The combination of these two aspects make it difficult to participate and express opinions, ultimately creating a high barrier to entry that could eliminate a lot of potential contributors.

Sorry it's blurry, but do you think this seems like a lot of hoops to jump through in order to get your voice heard? Do you think that it's a little harder to become a citizen journalism of sorts than they make it seem? I would include links to the articles pending review, but I'm still waiting to hear back from the moderator. (Note: it's been 6+ days since I've submitted them.)