Monitoring the Australian Blogosphere through the 2007 Australian Federal Election
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Monitoring the Australian Blogosphere through the 2007 Australian Federal Election
Lars Kirchhoff, Thomas Nicolai Sociomantic Labs, Berlin
lars.kirchhoff, [email protected]
http://sociomantic.com/
Axel Bruns, Tim Highfield Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
a.bruns, [email protected]
http://snurb.info/, http://andthentheworld.wordpress.com/
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Work in Progress
• Part of a larger research project:– Mapping public online communication– Researchers at Sociomantic Labs, Berlin, and CCi, Brisbane– Large-scale mixed-methods (qual./quant.) approach
• First iteration:– Australian political blogosphere, 2 Nov. 2007 to 24 Jan. 2008– Tracking ~230 blogs and related Websites– Scraping text and links only from articles
• i.e. excluding blogrolls, comments, headers, footers, etc.– Tracking activity over time, as it happens
• i.e. no retroactive crawling and mapping
– Further refinement of analysis to follow
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Overall Activity (blogs & mainstream news sites)
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5.11.2007 12.11.2007 19.11.2007 26.11.2007 3.12.2007 10.12.2007 17.12.2007 24.12.2007 31.12.2007 7.01.2008 14.01.2008 21.01.2008
Posts
Outgoing Links
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Overall Activity (blogs & mainstream news sites)
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5.11.2007 12.11.2007 19.11.2007 26.11.2007 3.12.2007 10.12.2007 17.12.2007 24.12.2007 31.12.2007 7.01.2008 14.01.2008
Posts/day
Outgoing Links/day
-13%
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Linking to Others (blogs & mainstream news sites)
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5.11.2007 12.11.2007 19.11.2007 26.11.2007 3.12.2007 10.12.2007 17.12.2007 24.12.2007 31.12.2007 7.01.2008 14.01.2008 21.01.2008
Links within population
Links outside population
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Publishing Activity (blogs & mainstream news sites)
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Australian News
International News
Blogger/Columnist
Opinion Site
Blogger
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Publishing Activity (without mainstream news)
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Publishing Activity (top 50, without mainstream news)
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Blogger/Columnist
Opinion Site
Blogger
1. crikey.com.au 2. creative2567.blogspot.com 3. blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt 4. theaustralian.news.com.au (opinion pages) 5. antonyloewenstein.com 6. onlineopinion.com.au 7. blogs.thewest.com.au 8. www.onlineopinion.com.au 9. problogger.net 10. andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com 11. clubtroppo.com.au 12. todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com 13. larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com 14. larvatusprodeo.net 15. blogs.news.com.au/news/blogocracy 16. fraises.blogspot.com 17. trevorcook.typepad.com 18. iainhall.wordpress.com 19. howardout.blogspot.com 20. www.news.com.au/heraldsun (opinion pages)21. kalimna.blogspot.com 22. hrw.org 23. petermartin.blogspot.com 24. webdiary.com.au 25. pollbludger.com
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Links Received (from within the full population of sites)
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Links Received (top 50, from within the full population of sites)
1. www.abc.net.au/news/indexes/justin/ 2. news.bbc.co.uk 3. larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com 4. clubtroppo.com.au 5. johnquiggin.com 6. blogs.thewest.com.au7. larvatusprodeo.net 8. crikey.com.au 9. petermartin.blogspot.com 10. eternalweightofglory.blogspot.com 11. blogs.news.com.au/news/news 12. todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com 13. crookedtimber.org 14. blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt 15. ninglun.wordpress.com 16. pollbludger.com 17. roadtosurfdom.com 18. realclimate.org 19. anonymouslefty.blogspot.com 20. kalimna.blogspot.com
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Assessing Importance and Impact
• Interpreting the data:
– What indicates a site’s opinion leadership?
– Publishing activity no indication of readership
– Inlinks received also dependent on number of posts published
• Inlinks : Posts ratio:
– Better indication of the impact of a site’s posts
– Many posts, few inlinks: much to say, but no-one’s listening
– Fewer posts, more inlinks: rewarded for quality over quantity
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Inlinks : Posts (top 50)
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
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0.8
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1
Blogger
Opinion Site
International News
Blogger/Columnist
Australian News
Blog Posts Inlinks Ratio
johnquiggin.com 84 80 0.95
larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com 185 107 0.58
eternalweightofglory.blogspot.com 124 67 0.54
problogger.net 259 136 0.53
petermartin.blogspot.com 141 75 0.53
ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au 53 24 0.45
blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/coverington 18 8 0.44
larvatusprodeo.net 183 78 0.43
marklawrence.blogspot.com 47 20 0.43
roadtosurfdom.com 104 44 0.42
yobbo.wordpress.com 27 11 0.41
clubtroppo.com.au 219 83 0.38
ninglun.wordpress.com 131 50 0.38
pollbludger.com 136 47 0.35
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Outlinks : Posts (top 50)
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
Blogger
Opinion Site
Blogger/Columnist
Blog Posts Outlinks Ratio
clubtroppo.com.au 219 365 1.67
marklawrence.blogspot.com 47 42 0.89
larvatusprodeo.net 183 140 0.77
larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com 185 116 0.63
thedonkeyvote.com 51 31 0.61
blogs.abc.net.au/thepollvault/ 105 57 0.54
problogger.net 259 138 0.53
eternalweightofglory.blogspot.com 124 58 0.47
laruth.livejournal.com 63 26 0.41
mushroomandrooster.net 57 23 0.40
ninglun.wordpress.com 131 50 0.38
rwdb.blogspot.com 60 22 0.37
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Average Article Length
0
2
4
6
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100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100
Blogger
Opinion Site
Blogger/Columnist
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Inlinks : Posts (x) vs. Word Length (y)
0.00
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0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6
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Further Outlook
• First impressions only:– Need to establish baseline for comparisons
• What level of activity is ‘average’ for Australian political discussion?• What ‘normal’ seasonal variations exist, away from election time?
– Need to track development over time• How stable is the ‘A-List’ of leading sites?• How much do external factors influence attention (news, crises)?
– Need to map link networks• What clusters of closely linked sites exist, and why?
– Need to determine topical content• Common thematic patterns in popular blogs / posts?• Common themes in site clusters?
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Further Information
• Continued coverage of the project:– snurb.info (Axel Bruns)
– And Then the World (Tim Highfield)
– Gatewatching.org (Jason Wilson, Barry Saunders, Axel Bruns)
• Articles:– “Discussion Paper: Network and Concept Maps for the Blogosphere”
(Bruns, Kirchhoff, Nicolai, Wilson, Saunders, Highfield, 2008)
– “Locating the Australian Blogosphere: Towards a New Research Methodology” (Bruns, Wilson, Saunders, Highfield, Kirchhoff, and Nicolai, ISEA conference 2008)
– “Australia's Political Blogosphere in the Aftermath of 2007 Federal Election” (Bruns, Wilson, Saunders, Kirchhoff, Nicolai, AoIR conference 2008)
• Sociomantic Labs:– Sociomantic.com (Lars Kirchhoff and Thomas Nicolai)