While a few passionate Stanford students dish up their daily political musings for consumption on the World Wide Web, many are hesitant to discuss politics through Internet blogs and other sites.

Whether on Xanga, Livejournal, Facebook, Blogspot or Myspace, more people are social networking on the Web than ever before. About eight percent of people who use the Internet have their own blogs, and 175,000 new blogs are being created each day, according to estimates from Technorati, a company that tracks the sites.

But with the election two weeks away, many students are not blogging about what’s on the ballot.

“Discussing politics online is either people patting themselves on the back or a heated debate that typically ends in scathing personal attacks,” said sophomore Pouya Fatemi, who doesn’t advertise his political point of view online.

A report from the Pew Internet Project found that politics was the primary topic on only 11 percent of blogs.

“Some of this is people who are writing about the election coming up or items of national importance,” Technorati creator David Sifry told the Chicago Tribune. “Some of them are people posting pictures of their kittens.”

Though blogging is not terribly popular on The Farm — a new group called “Blog for Stanford” has just 20 members — some students still see the Web as a great outlet.

Graduate student Gilbert Martinez posts almost daily on the Stanford Democrats Web site. He likes to put a personal touch on his largely informal blog (stanforddemocrats.blogspot.com).

Sometimes adopting a comical tone, he tries to objectively evaluate Democrat and Republican candidates and policies, but he said he’s not afraid to criticize Democrats.

In one typical post, he mulled over the prospect of Sen. Barack Obama (D- Ill.) running for president.

“I don’t think I was ever on the Obama ‘08 bandwagon,” he wrote. “No matter how exciting Obama is, I don’t have any real basis on which to judge him policy-wise. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t easily move up, he just has an enormous amount of ground to cover.”

Sophomore Scott Keyes, who also writes for the Progressive, contributes as an editorial assistant to the politicalwire.com blog, but his name is not attached to any of his postings.

“Only friends have commented to me,” he said. “Blogs have a long way to go in making hard news because a lot of blogging is simply giving opinions on articles or reports that are written by major newspapers rather than creating original news.”

Another option students have to express their politics is a new feature on Facebook.com that allows users to declare which candidate they support and which issues are important to them. Some lists dozens of preferences and do not hesitate to declare they are fervent about what is at stake in November, while many others hold back.

For example, students can join the “Obama In ‘08” Stanford Facebook group without actually needing to be politically active.

Many students told The Daily they have no idea that there is an Election tab on Facebook.

Freshman Chris Piech said he knew about the feature but decided not to use it.

“If you’re known as a Democrat or a Republican, then that makes it or breaks it for you for some things, like even academic opportunities.”

Others worry that people generate stereotypes based on a one- or two-word declaration on Facebook.

“Students aren’t there to explain their views,” sophomore Christine Peng said. “Others just look at the [election/party preferences] and judge you based upon that briefly acquired first impression.”

Facebook is a helpful tool for political groups like the campus Republicans and Democrats who can mobilize volunteers with the mass-messaging system. While the group sites do not seem to have been updated since last year, the forums offer a chance for like-minded students to pool.