Harvard Law’s Beekman Center is taking a hard look this week at the blogosphere’s influence on politics during its biennial Internet + Society 2004 conference.

The conference, entitled “Votes, Bits, and Bytes,” takes place December 9-11 and has a terrific line-up of sessions lead by speakers like Jay Rosen, Dave Winer, Rebecca MacKinnon, Dan Gillmor and more. A webcast is planned. Briefing materials can be found here (PDF).

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.