One of the more disturbing trends on the internet is the ghettoization of extreme cultures. People don't have to interact with each other if they don't want to. Liberals can read the Huffington Post, conservatives check Drudge Report. More extreme people all have their websites, each equipped with specific ideological blinders.
Sometimes there is some cross pollination, but people are usually only exposed to members of other groups through quotes provided by their preferred sources. This happens when there is a debate around a current partisan issue, or more often when an author is trying to make a point that people on the other side sure are stupid/racist/sexist/etc.
Either way, the statements from the other side are at least quoted and links to their original location are generally provided. A reader can browse through the respective articles and come away with a conclusion as to how the evidence seems to stack up. People are still biased and will likely stick with their own ideological champions, but at least it is feasible to get a fuller picture of the debate in a relatively short amount of time.
But a new trend has been emerging. We don't see many new blogs, but there are now a lot of video bloggers on all parts of the spectrum. Though more often than not the political vloggers are on one of the more extreme sides or they would not have started a political video blog. In some sense, arguments in video format should be more persuasive. Videos can more fully utilize sarcasm, humor, body language and can utilize graphics in ways a blogger writing an article cannot. But while they may be very convincing to a subset of people, they are also isolating themselves from the general debate.
Part of this is because watching a video is a bigger commitment than reading an article. A two minute read becomes an eight minute video. Skimming a video is much less effective than skimming a post. Hoping someone takes the time to watch a video is a bigger ask.
Vloggers are also isolated from mainstream debate because citing and responding to inaccurate parts of the video is more difficult. You can't just copy and paste the questionable arguments into a paragraph in order to expose where the vlogger is mistaken. You either have to type out the relevant transcript, describe the vlogger's arguments in your own words (increasing the chance of misstatements), link to the point in time of the most egregious part of the video, or have the people observing the discussion watch the whole video themselves and potentially waste the time of their readers.
Given the most ideological video bloggers have relatively niche audiences, this is a lot of work to have a dispute. And it's already work when a person who disagrees with you has a very different ideological perspective. And since vloggers are generally not yet high status people, there is even less reason to engage. (We will see more critiques of documentaries or of people who appear on television). Most people would reasonably choose not to start or follow up on an argument with someone who communicates primarily through video (or for that matter, a podcast without a transcript). The most likely person to respond would be another vlogger (or podcaster).
This creates a dynamic where vloggers start dialogue with people who are on the other side, but never receive feedback from anyone outside their ecosystem. They end up shouting into the wind.
But it's not just the wind, they have some followers. And these followers see how their relatively articulate vlogger is rarely countered by people with opposing ideas. These viewers and the vlogger themselves are at high risk of thinking they don't get responses because the videos make incontrovertible arguments, and not because it's too much trouble to call bullshit on long winded videos.
And that's why we can expect video bloggers to be relatively extreme, they are engaging people in a medium where debate is far more inconvenient. This format is far more popular among younger internet users, so it is somewhat scary to think about how political discourse will evolve under these dynamics.
Note: Maybe a simpler hypothesis is that most video blogs are the new long winded disorganized blog or forum posts. Generally, no one with the relevant knowledge would take the time to counter them. Yes, I appreciate the irony. This is post getting a bit long winded.