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)
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000 Posts
Outgoing Links
800
600
400
200
0
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

Overall Activity (blogs & mainstream news sites)
1400
1200
1000
-13%
800
Posts/day
Outgoing Links/day
600
400
200
0
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

Linking to Others (blogs & mainstream news sites)
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000 Links within population
Links outside population
800
600
400
200
0
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

Publishing Activity (blogs & mainstream news sites)
9000
8000
7000
6000
Australian News
5000
International News
Blogger/Columnist
Opinion Site
4000
Blogger
3000
2000
1000
0

Publishing Activity (without mainstream news)

Publishing Activity (top 50, without mainstream news)
1400
• crikey.com.au
• creative2567.blogspot.com
• blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt
• theaustralian.news.com.au (opinion pages)
1200
• antonyloewenstein.com
• onlineopinion.com.au
• blogs.thewest.com.au
• www.onlineopinion.com.au
1000 • problogger.net
• andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com
• clubtroppo.com.au
• todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com
800 • larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com
• larvatusprodeo.net
• blogs.news.com.au/news/blogocracy
• fraises.blogspot.com
Blogger/Columnist
• trevorcook.typepad.com
600 Opinion Site
• iainhall.wordpress.com
Blogger
• howardout.blogspot.com
• www.news.com.au/heraldsun (opinion pages)
• kalimna.blogspot.com
400 • hrw.org
• petermartin.blogspot.com
• webdiary.com.au
• pollbludger.com
200
0

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.au
7. 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)
1
Blog Posts Inlinks Ratio
0.9
johnquiggin.com 84 80 0.95
larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com 185 107 0.58
0.8 eternalweightofglory.blogspot.com 124 67 0.54
problogger.net 259 136 0.53
petermartin.blogspot.com 141 75 0.53
0.7
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
0.6
marklawrence.blogspot.com 47 20 0.43
roadtosurfdom.com 104 44 0.42
0.5 yobbo.wordpress.com 27 11 0.41 Blogger
clubtroppo.com.au 219 83 0.38 Opinion Site
ninglun.wordpress.com 131 50 0.38 International News
0.4
pollbludger.com 136 47 0.35 Blogger/Columnist
Australian News
0.3
0.2
0.1
0

Outlinks : Posts (top 50)
1.8
1.6
Blog Posts Outlinks Ratio
1.4
clubtroppo.com.au 219 365 1.67
marklawrence.blogspot.com 47 42 0.89
1.2 larvatusprodeo.net 183 140 0.77
larvatusprodeo.wordpress.com 185 116 0.63
thedonkeyvote.com 51 31 0.61
1 blogs.abc.net.au/thepollvault/ 105 57 0.54
problogger.net 259 138 0.53
eternalweightofglory.blogspot.com 124 58 0.47 Blogger
0.8 Opinion Site
laruth.livejournal.com 63 26 0.41
mushroomandrooster.net 57 23 0.40 Blogger/Columnist
ninglun.wordpress.com 131 50 0.38
0.6
rwdb.blogspot.com 60 22 0.37
0.4
0.2
0

Average Article Length
14
12
10
8
Blogger
Opinion Site
Blogger/Columnist
6
4
2
0
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100

Inlinks : Posts (x) vs. Word Length (y)
1200.00
1000.00
800.00
600.00
400.00
200.00
0.00
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)