Kostas Zafiropoulos - Discussion of eParticipation topics in Greek political blogs

Discussion of eParticipation topics in Greek political blogs Kostas Zafiropoulos, Dimitrios Vagianos &Vasiliki Vrana University of Macedonia and Technological Education Institute of Serres, GREECE

Democrats vs Republicans

Focal point blogs
Only few blogs have a very big number of incoming links while the rest, the majority of blogs, have only a small number of incoming links
Drezner and Farrell (2004):
Blogs with large numbers of incoming links offer both a means of filtering interesting blog posts from less interesting ones, and a focal point at which bloggers with interesting posts, and potential readers of these posts can coordinate.

General idea
Explore patterns of self-organization taking into consideration community characteristics:
connectivity and discussion
Connections through Blogrolls

Aims
Describe Greek blogosphere
With regards to the community characteristics
Explore discussion of eParticipation topics within this framework
Search for similarities between blogs’ interlinkages and topics discussion

The case study
Technorati.com to locate Greek political blogs
Tags to ND , PASOK , KKE (Left) , SYRIZA (Left) , LAOS (Right)
May 2009
Blogs with some Authority ( Technorati authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months )
Recorded 101 blogs, and the incoming links from Blogrolls

Method for locating focal point clusters
Data reduction using Multidimensional Scaling of the network adjacency matrix 0/1 ( stress = .0 7 ), based on Blogrolls
Hierarchical Cluster Analysis
5 clusters

Cluster characteristics
39 blogs are located in 4 central clusters,
62 blogs are not central (cluster 1)

Blogs network- ( % blogs – incoming links average ) Cluster 1, 61.4% - 2.8 Cluster 2, 17.8% - 6. 2 KKE, SYRIZA (Left) Cluster 3 , 7.9% - 9.3 PASOK Cluster 5 , 4% - 10.7 Left, digital liberties, information provision, discussion and argumentation Cluster 4 , 8.9% - 9.5 Left with broader speculation about society and democracy

Clusters’ interconnections- Percentages of incoming links with respect to the maximum number of incoming links between clusters Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4 Cluster 5 Cluster 2 4 % 11 % 11 % Cluster 3 2 % 18 % 16 % Cluster 4 12 % 13 % 25 % Cluster 5 1 % 13 % 22 %

A graphical representation of interlinkage

Step 2
Content analysis is used for the investigation of the eParticipation topics discussed in the central clusters’ blogs using the NVIVO 8
The data content is chosen to be the written content included in the 39 blogs in the central clusters

Content analysis units of analysis and data (NVIVO 8)
The main title of the blog along with a summarized description
The “about” part of each blog (when applicable) is where the scope of the blog is given, the motivation of the blogger to create it etc.
The main part of this analysis, the posts of the political blogs, including the title of each post, its main body followed by its’ comments.
In frequently updated blogs this period of time can be a month whereas in less frequently updated blogs we may have to examine posts from 6 months or more.
For this study, the units of the media content were decided to be words or phrases. Synonyms or small phrases were grouped together for the purpose of this investigation. This analysis looked for specific areas of interest over which discussions are occurring among the several blogs through their posts/comments in all 39 blogs of the 4 identified clusters.

eParticipation Topics
1 Campaigning
2 Community building / Collaborative Environments
3 Consultation
4 Deliberation
5 Discourse
6 Electioneering
7 Information Provision
8 Mediation
9 Polling
10 Concern creation
11 Media and book reference
12 Environmental issues

Findings
average number of topics covered per cluster is:
Cluster 2: 56%, cluster 3: 58.3%, cluster 4: 57.4%, cluster 5: 62.5%
Information provision most popular topic
characterises 37/39 blogs of the 4 clusters
followed by Campaigning, Electioneering and Concern Creation
relevance percentages:
Cluster 2 high percentages in Community building, Deliberation, Discourse, Concern creation, and it presents no activity regarding Consultation.
Cluster 3 high percentages in Campaigning, in Community Building, and no activity in Mediation.
Cluster4 high percentages in Deliberation, and in Discourse.
Cluster 5 high percentages in Polling, and in Concern creation, while it presents small percentages in Campaigning, Community Building, and Discourse.
Overall, topics that have high relevance percentages are Information Provision, and to a small percentage Media and book issues. On the other hand, Electioneering, Polling, and Environmental issues are placed at the last seats of the topics list.

Associations between clusters’ content and interlinkage

Conclusions
The paper proposed a twofold methodology,
first to locate central focal point blogs,
second to explore the association of these central focal points hyperlinks interconnections with their content similarity.
Greek political blogs are organized around central blog groups, producing cores /not forming a heavily polarized system.
Discussion of eParticipation issues covers a broad range.
There is strong evidence that central blog groups present similarities in terms of their linkage and eParticipation topics and areas of discussion.

Thank you
Kostas Zafiropoulos
[email_address]

Kostas Zafiropoulos - Discussion of eParticipation topics in Greek political blogs

by Danube University Krems, Centre for E-Governance on May 05, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 12

Statistics

Kostas Zafiropoulos - Discussion of eParticipation topics in Greek political blogs — Presentation Transcript