Monitoring the Australian Blogosphere through the 2007 Australian Federal Election

Lars Kirchhoff, Thomas Nicolai Sociomantic Labs, Berlin

lars.kirchhoff, thomas.nicolai@sociomantic.com

http://sociomantic.com/

Axel Bruns, Tim Highfield Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane

a.bruns, t.highfield@qut.edu.au

http://snurb.info/, http://andthentheworld.wordpress.com/

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

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

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%

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

Publishing Activity (blogs & mainstream news sites)

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9000

Australian News

International News

Blogger/Columnist

Opinion Site

Blogger

Publishing Activity (without mainstream news)

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

Links Received (from within the full population of sites)

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

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

Inlinks : Posts (top 50)

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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

Outlinks : Posts (top 50)

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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

Average Article Length

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Blogger

Opinion Site

Blogger/Columnist

Inlinks : Posts (x) vs. Word Length (y)

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0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6

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?

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)