Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere

Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere
Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Tim Highfield ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Brisbane, Australia
Lars Kirchhoff, Thomas Nicolai Sociomantic Labs, Berlin, Germany
Image by campoalto

Mapping Blog Networks
Standard methodology:
find 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
Problems in blog mapping:
defining and identifying the population to be mapped
determining which links are relevant
method of plotting links, identifying blog clusters, etc.
correlating link network structure and blog themes
tracking changes over time

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

Our Approach
Process stages (Australian political blogs as test case):
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.)

Patterns of Activity (Jan.-Aug. 2009) Bushfires Budget Artefact Qld Election New Sites Added

Content Analysis: Individual Blogs

Content Analysis: Political Blogosphere 4-5 August 2009

Next Steps
ARC Discovery Project, 2010-12 (Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess)
Expand the population:
From political blogs to Australian blogs in general
Snowball / network crawler approach
Map the blogosphere:
Long-term map of frequent interlinkages, clusters of blog communities
Short-term maps of ad hoc networks around current events and themes
Trending topics and correlations with mainstream media
Patterns of information flow, structures of dissemination and influence
Extend to other online publics:
Twitter , Flickr , YouTube – what can we track, what publics do we find?
How are these spaces interconnected?

Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere

by Axel Bruns on Jun 24, 2010

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