In Search of Australian Blogs:Determining the Extent of the

Contemporary Australian Blogosphere

Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess

ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and InnovationBrisbane, Australia

Image by campoalto

Understanding Blogs

•Blog research to date:• qualitative studies of blogging genres, communities, and practices

(e.g. Uses of Blogs, 2006, eds. Bruns & Jacobs)• quantitative studies of blog networks (e.g. issue-based or national)

•Standard methodology:• find relevant blogs (search, Technorati, specific blog platform, etc.)• identify links (on current page) crawl to linked pages repeat• capture (scrape) text and other details (not always included)• plot link network structure, correlate with blog content patterns

•Big questions:• structure of online publics – topical and other networks in the blogosphere• growth, decline, or stable equilibrium in the population of bloggers?• patterns of flow and dissemination of information

Key Problems

• Technology limitations:• crawlers and scrapers often lack sophistication

• need to distinguish: • posts – comments – ancillary / functional texts

• discursive links – blogroll links – functional links

• want to slice data in different ways:• select blog activity for specific days, weeks, months

• select blog content and links for specific blogs or blog clusters

• Analytical limitations:• patterns of interlinkage tell only part of the story

• maps provide only a temporary snapshot

• want to understand:• what clusters have in common

• and how they change over time

• later: crossover to Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Our Approach

• Process stages:• data gathering and processing

• track large number of (broadly) political Australian blogs through RSS feeds• scrape blog content for newly posted entries• separate blog post content from ancillary materials / separate discursive links from other link types• (grow master list of blogs as required)

• content analysis• combine extracted blog post content (per blog, per cluster, per timeframe, …) • automated analysis to identify key themes and keywords • currently using Leximancer

• network analysis• combine extracted link information (overall, per timeframe, per cluster, …)• automated network mapping to identify lead blogs and clusters• currently using Gephi

• combined analysis• e.g. comparative content analysis for lead blogs and clusters in the link network• e.g. correlation of blogosphere patterns with external factors (parallel themes in mainstream media, etc.)

• 2009: Australian political blogs as test case• 2010-12: ARC Discovery Project (Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess)

Content Analysis: Individual Blogs

Content Analysis: Political Blogosphere

4-5 August 2009(graph: Tim Highfield)

Blog-Based Online Publics in Australia

•Finding Australian blogs:• from political blogs to Australian blogs in general• defined as blogs in Australia, by Australians, and/or about Australia

•Approach:• drawing on existing Australian blog directories (e.g. OzBloggers.net)

• self-nominated lists, often outdated – no comprehensive list

• harvest and cross-check lists (active? Australian?), some initial classification• conduct network crawls from harvested population, add more blogs• repeat until… ?

•Comprehensive?• no hope of finding all Australian blogs• focus on blogs with at least some degree of visibility• appropriate for study of online publics

Early Observations

•Publics in the Australian blogosphere:• key blogging themes:

• maternity• food • marketing • expats• religion

• identity and location not always clear, but:• Melbourne and Sydney > Brisbane > Perth and Adelaide > rest of the country• around 50%:50% male/female (+ one pet)• many sea/tree/lifechangers

• next steps:• crawling out from here to extend these populations• find additional blogs and crawl their networks to fill in obvious thematic gaps

• programmers• self-help • politics• arts & crafts• academic

Next Steps

•Map the Australian blogosphere:• long-term map of frequent interlinkages, clusters of blog communities

• how isolated or interconnected are these online publics?

• Short-term maps of ad hoc networks around current events and themes• (how) do they respond to key events – e.g. Gillard’s takeover?

• Trending topics and correlations with mainstream media• how do themes and topics change over time?

• Patterns of information flow, structures of dissemination and influence • who passes on information within/across clusters?

•Extend to other online publics:• Twitter, Flickr, YouTube – what can we track, what publics do we find?•How are these spaces interconnected?