Issue Publics on the Web: Applying Network ... - Wiley Online Library

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Issue Publics on the Web: Applying Network Theory to the War Blogosphere Mark Tremayne Nan Zheng Jae Kook Lee Jaekwan Jeong School of Journalism University of Texas at Austin

Abstract This study had two primary objectives. The first was to examine the predictors of preferential attachment in the war blog network. A multiple regression analysis revealed use of links to blogs and original reporting content as significant predictors of incoming links. Second, the war blogosphere was mapped to reveal two distinct halves, the liberal and the conservative. Measures of network centrality identified key blogs, some of which served as conduits between the two spheres. Other differences between the sides were examined. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00326.x

Introduction

If the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal of the late 1990s is the event that marked the birth of online journalism (Lasica, 2003b), the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 did the same for blogging. Blogs are a subset of all websites, commentaries posted in diary form, with the most recent entry listed first. Although blogs began to appear in the 1990s, it was after September 11th that the phenomenon spread rapidly. Many of the new blogs focused on the events of that day and President Bush’s subsequent ‘‘war on terrorism.’’ These so-called war blogs typically evolved to include discussion of politics and current events, including, notably, extensive discussion of the 2002 and 2004 United States elections. These politically-oriented blogs, referred to by Herring and others as filter blogs (Cornfield, Carson, Kalis, & Simon, 2005; Halavais, 2002; Herring, Scheidt, Bonus, & Wright, 2005), offer a means for entering into public discourse, essentially becoming another way to participate in the political sphere. In 2004 blog readers began to catch up with blog writers. The Pew Internet and American Life Project found a 58% rise in blog reading during that year (Rainie, 290

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2005). This study found 32 million American readers, about 27% of adult Internet users, a readership that is approximately 20% the size of the newspaper audience and 40% the size of the talk radio audience. Blog readers have become particularly dependent on blogs for information and opinion regarding the war in Iraq (Johnson & Kaye, 2004b, 2007). The rising influence of blogs warrants serious attention from media scholars. The blogosphere also provides researchers with a natural laboratory for examining theories concerning network evolution. Like the broader Web, war blogs form a network that is well-suited to network analysis (Lievrouw, et al., 2001; Morris & Ogan, 1996). Bloggers provide two types of links that hold the blogosphere together (Drezner & Farrell, 2004). Most blogs have a semi-permanent ‘‘blogroll,’’ a list of links to other blogs that the author has chosen to make available to his or her readers. More importantly, bloggers’ posts may contain links to other websites, including posts in other blogs. This collection of links and blogs comprises the blogosphere. Starting from a random blog, a reader could follow links to almost any other blog, and the number of links required to make the trip would be relatively small. Herring et al. confirmed this by starting at four randomlyselected blogs and mapping the paths connecting them (Herring, Kouper, et al., 2005). Because few links are needed if one follows the optimal path connecting any two nodes, networks are often referred to as small worlds (Watts, 1999). In networks such as these, most nodes will be relatively unlinked, but others will become hubs, centers of traffic on the network. In this study, we used the war blogosphere, specifically bloggers writing about Iraq before and during the 2003 war, as a testing ground to examine the process by which certain blogs become hubs of activity while others remain on the periphery. Understanding this process is important because these information networks have influence over the flow of ideas on the web. Moreover, because the blogosphere is heavily interlinked with journalism websites, the spread of information from the media to the public and vice versa is increasingly affected by bloggers who, if not already serving as opinion leaders, at least provide a window into the process of opinion formation. In addition to examining the process of hub formation, the role of political ideology in network formation was examined. Is the Iraq War blogosphere, which might be characterized as an ‘‘issue public’’ (Converse, 1964), dominated by liberal or conservative voices? Are blogs from each end of the political spectrum equally represented in the network, both in the number of nodes and in node centrality? These questions were answered with a content analysis of 79 war blogs and 899 individual posts about the war in Iraq over a two-year period. Literature Review Network Theory and the Blogosphere A key question of network analysis concerns the conditions under which a node becomes central to a network. For web publishers the practical implications are clear: A higher blog rank or search engine rank is dependent on moving to a more central Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 290–310 ª 2006 International Communication Association

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position within a sub-network of the web. Most bloggers fail to achieve this and remain on the periphery, with very few outside links pointing to their sites. A few, however, collect hundreds or thousands of links from fellow bloggers (Adamic & Glance, 2005; Herring, Kouper, et al., 2005). The critical question for both practitioners and theorists has thus been: How does a node become a hub, a center of activity on a network? Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, born three centuries ago, introduced the idea of networks, or graphs, when studying a problem concerning bridges and land masses (Baraba´si, 2002). More than two hundred years later, Paul Erdo¨s and Alfre´d Re´nyi proposed random graph theory to explain the emergence of networks (Baraba´si, 2002; Watts, 2003). Their idea was that random associations between nodes could explain the variation in links typical of most networks. This explanation went unchallenged as researchers focused on network structures and information flow rather than evolution of the network itself. In the 1960s, Rogers (1983) studied the flow of ideas through social systems including the individual adoption process and the large group diffusion process. In the latter area, Granovetter (1973) made the case that ideas are spread most widely not by persons in the middle of a cluster of acquaintances, but by peripheral members who spend time in multiple social circles, an assertion that brought the independence assumption of random graph theory into question. Because an individual is limited by time and geography, new ties are, to some degree, dependent on old ties. Random graph theory was discarded, and in the late 1990s researchers began work on a new solution (Baraba´si, 2002; Baraba´si & Albert, 1999; Watts, 2003). Baraba´si and Albert (1999) graphed web pages (nodes) by the number of links to other web pages. They found a scale-free power-law distribution, like the one in Figure 1. The general formula for a distribution of this type is: N(k) ; k2g, where the parameter g is the degree exponent. For the Web as a whole, they found a curve with a degree exponent of 2.1 for incoming links to a page and an exponent of 2.5 for outgoing links from web pages.

Number of Links

Number of Web Pages

Figure 1 Power law distribution 292

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Only in the late 1990s did researchers begin understanding why naturally occurring networks follow this pattern (Adamic & Huberman, 2001; Albert, Jeong, & Baraba´si, 1999; Watts, 1999). Baraba´si and Albert (1999) discovered two principles that explain all distributions that follow a power law: growth and preferential attachment. Networks do not come fully formed but evolve into maturity, usually at such a gradual pace that growth goes unnoticed. Because the Web has developed so quickly, however, the effects of growth are readily observable. Baraba´si and Albert (1999) found that the older nodes in a network are more likely to have collected links than ones that have just been created. In this way, network growth favors nodes that have been around a long time. Moreover, when bloggers, for example, choose which other blogs to link to, they follow a pattern of preferential attachment. If a site has proven useful to other users, it is more likely to attract the attention of newer sites. Because of growth and preferential attachment, the ‘‘rich get richer’’ and an unequal distribution of links and user traffic results. For each network, the mechanism of preferential attachment is unique. Tremayne found that editors of news websites used links to provide context to certain types of stories (Tremayne, 2004). This pattern of choices resulted in the typical distribution of links in a network: A few stories were heavily linked, while the great majority of stories had very few links. For the blogosphere, growth is a certainty. A search in late 2005 of the Blogosphere Ecosystem at Truthlaidbear.com generated a list of 865 blogs that had recently mentioned the war in Iraq. Of those, more than 600 were born in 2004 and 2005. A cumulative total of Iraq War blogs from this search is depicted in Figure 2 below.

900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100

05 20

04 20

03 20

02 20

01 20

00 20

99 19

98 19

97 19

19

96

0

Figure 2 Iraq War blogs, cumulative, by year (Source: Blogosphere Ecosystem) Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 290–310 ª 2006 International Communication Association

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The other network theory principle, preferential attachment, has not yet been fully explored for the blogosphere network. Therefore, we ask the following research question: RQ1: What features of Iraq War blogs best predicted their emergence as hubs in this network?

The centrality of a node in a network results from the links it has with other nodes. For the blogosphere, success is primarily a function of having incoming links of both quality and quantity. We used incoming links as a dependent variable and investigated a number of other factors as predictors of incoming links. These are: Authorship The number of authors for a blog can vary. While single-authored blogs are the most common, others are small or large (but finite) groups, and some are open to anyone who registers. Prior research suggested the different functions these arrangements may encourage (Herring, Scheidt, et al., 2005). Politics Adamic and Glance (2005) found different clustering patterns for conservative and liberal blogs, which suggested that ideology could be a factor in the structure of the blogosphere. A 5-point scale was used in the present study, ranging from ‘‘very liberal’’ to ‘‘very conservative’’ for each blog. Post Type ‘‘Surveillance’’ posts were defined as those alerting readers to something they might find useful or interesting but offering no opinion or original content of their own. ‘‘Opinion’’ posts were defined as any post expressing the blogger’s opinion. ‘‘Reporting’’ posts consisted of those absent of opinion but containing original news content, first-person accounts, or evidence of research. ‘‘Personal’’ posts were those describing aspects of the blogger’s personal life and in which issue-oriented or current events-related content was absent. Sums for each type were computed for each blog. Affect Each post was coded as ‘‘emotionless,’’ ‘‘somewhat emotional,’’ or ‘‘very emotional,’’ and a mean was calculated for each blog. Responsiveness This dichotomous variable was used to characterize each post as either directly responsive to another person’s message, or not, and a mean was computed for each blog. Gender Prior research has identified gender as a possible factor in link distribution within the blogosphere (harp & tremayne, 2006). Because some blogs have multiple authors, our scale was: entirely female, mostly female (67% to 99% female), even mix (34% to 66% female), mostly male (1% to 33% female), and entirely male. This was based on the aggregate of gender codes for each Iraq post within a blog. 294

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Outgoing Links Use of outgoing links by bloggers may be predictive of incoming links due to ‘‘blogging etiquette.’’ In this study, two specific types of outgoing links were reviewed, those to other blogs and those to media sites. Blogger Background Professional training and/or establishment ties may work for or against a blogger. The bloggers’ backgrounds were noted when possible and coded into nominal categories. In addition to examining preferential attachment in the war blog network, we were also interested in examining the differences between the political left and right. The Web, Democracy, and the Public Sphere In just over a decade the Internet has grown into a major channel of communication, one that has reshaped activism, political campaigns, and public discourse. The dramatic rise of Democratic hopeful Howard Dean’s grassroots Internet campaign and the fall of Senator Trent Lott are commonly attributed (perhaps wrongly so) to the power of the blogosphere. No doubt the influence of bloggers reach a zenith during the 2004 elections when the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s ‘‘The Internet and Campaign 2004’’ report found that 37% of adults in the United States and 61% of online Americans ‘‘used the Internet to get political news and information, discuss candidates, and debate issues in emails, or participate directly in the political process by volunteering or giving contributions to candidates’’ (Rainie, 2005). Some researchers have approached blogs as a form of citizen journalism that offers a wider spectrum of perspectives (Drezner & Farrell, 2004; Grabowicz, 2003; Lasica, 2003a; The State of the News Media, 2005; Witt, 2004). Johnson and Kaye (2004a) found that some blog users view them as a superior form of journalism compared to the mainstream media. Papacharissi (2004) argues that Internet discourse can contribute to a stronger public sphere but only with greater diversity and volume of discussion. Rice (2004) has pointed to other potentials of online political processes: increased influence by savvy special interest groups, removal from traditional political processes of those dedicated to online discussion, and the decline of objectivity in traditional media. For the blogosphere to play a constructive role in the debate over U.S. policy in Iraq, an exchange of ideas among people of different political beliefs would arguably be more productive than the two existing factions remaining isolated, periodically alerted by fellow bloggers to news and opinions that support their pre-existing beliefs (in which the blogosphere plays only a supplemental role). To address this issue, we asked: RQ2: What is the network structure of the Iraq War blogosphere?

Are there two distinct spheres with little interaction, or is there evidence of significant cross-posting? Furthermore, we were interested in comparing the distinctive features of the left and right spheres: RQ3: What were the major differences between conservative and liberal Iraq War blogs? Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 290–310 ª 2006 International Communication Association

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Method

In this study, the research questions described above were addressed using a content analysis of the ever-changing blogosphere, an effort well-documented as challenging for new media content (McMillan, 2000; Riffe, Lacy, & Fico, 1998). The Blog Sample A number of websites provide rankings of blogs, usually according to the total number of web links pointing to each blog. These include Daypop.com, Technorati.com, BlogPulse.com and the Blogosphere Ecosystem (at Truthlaidbear.com). After searching each site with a list of known blogs, the Blogosphere Ecosystem was found to be the most complete. In addition, this site provided a list of bloggers who had posted about particular topics, including the war in Iraq. We began with this list, a total of 865 blogs. Our desire was to track blog posts concerning the war in Iraq back to the beginning of international debate concerning a possible invasion by the U.S. In September of 2002, the Bush administration began making its case for war with a speech by the President to the United Nations General Assembly. This month was chosen as the starting point for coding and March of 2004, the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the war, as the ending point. Inquiry was limited to the blogs that covered this time period and maintained a complete archive of posts. There were 77 blogs that met these restrictions. From the links in the Iraq War posts on these blogs, two more blogs were added that were linked to at least three times and met the above criteria. The total number of blogs in the sample was 79 (see Appendix). Post Sampling We used a systematic sample to isolate posts from each blog. The following dates were selected for coding: September 4, 12, 20 and 28, 2002; March 4, 12, 20, and 28, 2003; September 4, 12, 20, and 28, 2003; March 4, 12, 20, and 28, 2004. A Lexis Nexis search revealed these months to be higher than average for war in Iraq news, which served as assurance that a considerable number of posts could be found. Coding and Reliability Four coders were used, including the first author. A pre-test of the coding scheme was conducted, reliability calculated, and alterations made for variables that failed to reach acceptable reliability. Each coder was assigned 19 or 20 blogs. Every post on each of the sampling dates was coded for story topic, a total of 4,289 posts. Of these, 899 were categorized as Iraq War posts. These were coded for each of the variables outlined above. A sub-sample of the 79 blogs and 899 posts was used to compute reliability. From an alphabetical listing of the blogs, every fifth blog (N = 16) was selected and assigned one of the 16 sampling dates. These were coded by each of the four coders and a group Krippendorf’s alpha computed for each variable. Reliability on the variables ranged from .73 to .99 with a mean of .84. 296

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Results Descriptive Data This section provides some descriptive data on the 79 blogs, their authors, and the 899 Iraq war posts. The blogs in this sample come in a variety of forms, summarized in Figure 3. The majority (64) are individual blogs, defined as those written by one author. There are five small group blogs, including those written by four or fewer authors and those by one primary author with occasional guest writers. There are eight large group blogs, defined as having five or more authors, but that are not open to anyone. One blog in the sample, Metafilter.com, is a public blog. This site has hundreds of writers, and anyone who registers at the site can post to it. The authorship of one blog could not be determined. Bloggers who write about the war in Iraq are predominantly male. Of the 829 posts where a gender could be determined or inferred, 823 were men (99%). This percentage is considerably higher than the percentage of our 79 blogs that are written by men or by a group of mostly men, 76%. This indicates that on blogs written by women, there are relatively few posts about the war in Iraq compared to those authored by men. This is consistent with the finding of Herring, Kouper, Scheidt, and Wright (2004) that most filter blogs are written by adult males. Our war bloggers work in a variety of professions including as a cartoonist, a librarian, a psychiatrist, and a former member of the U.S. Navy. However, the majority appears to be writers, academics, or technology-related professionals (see Figure 4). A large number of bloggers do not reveal their professional backgrounds. This group is more highly educated than the public as a whole. Of those that reveal their educational backgrounds (N = 32), more than half have earned graduate degrees, while nearly a third have Ph.D.s or law degrees. These bloggers hold political beliefs that are similar to the U.S. population as a whole (see Figure 5). Coders rated 36 of the blogs as somewhat or very liberal, 34 as

Figure 3 Types of blogs in the sample Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 290–310 ª 2006 International Communication Association

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Figure 4 War bloggers’ job sectors

somewhat or very conservative, and 9 as moderate. This middle category is smaller than that of the general population and may indicate that the blogosphere is a partisan space. Some of the nine blogs coded as moderate/mixed are group blogs that had a relatively equal split between liberals and conservatives; however, the posts were still partisan in nature. On the 16 coding days, the blogs contained an average of 11.4 (SD = 16.5) posts about the war in Iraq and a total of 2,368 words (SD = 3,389), about 208 words for each post. The large standard deviations reveal a more significant pattern; bloggers vary widely in both their frequency of writing about the topic and in the length of the posts. Bloggers themselves often make reference to two types of writers, linkers and thinkers. Linkers tend to write short posts that contain one or more links, while thinkers tend to write longer essays that may or may not contain links. In this sample, Instapundit.com falls into the former category with 77 posts about Iraq, almost five a day, most containing at least one link. The posts are relatively short, about 127 words each. Newsdissector.org fits the thinker category with only six posts in our sample but with an average length of 3,554 words. These two blogs represent the extremes, as the majority of those remaining fall somewhere in between on both number of posts and length of posts. The most common type of post in our sample was the ‘‘opinion post,’’ accounting for 59% of all posts. Next most common was surveillance at 39%, followed by reporting at 2%, and personal at less than 1% (see Figure 6). Although ‘‘personal’’ posts were common in other categories, posts about the Iraq War were rarely in this category. War bloggers had different styles when it came to linking. Some offered few or no links, while two had 77 outgoing links each (Instapundit.com and WarInContext. org). The bloggers were heavily dependent on traditional media for linked material, 298

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Figure 5 War bloggers on the political spectrum

even while downplaying the significance of mainstream media in many cases. Of more than 1,400 links in the sample, 50% went to news stories, 10% went to news editorials, and 23% went to bloggers. The remaining links went to commercial websites, government and non-governmental organizations, and miscellaneous. Research Questions The first research question addressed the causes behind preferred attachment. What characteristics of blogs contribute to the success of the blog in the network as

Figure 6 Post types Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 290–310 ª 2006 International Communication Association

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measured by incoming links from other bloggers? Table 1 is a correlation matrix depicting associations among the quantitative variables from our content analysis. A number of variables are associated with the primary dependent variable, incoming links. The strongest correlation is with outgoing blog links, followed by the number of opinion posts, reporting posts, media links, surveillance posts, and gender. Blogs written by women did not receive as many links as those written by men. The strongest correlation is between surveillance and media links, an unsurprising result. Opinion posts often contained links to other blogs (.756 correlation) or to media sites (.734). A multiple regression analysis (Table 2) reveals which blog elements contribute to predicting the number of incoming links from other bloggers. Eighteen blogs were excluded from the regression analysis because they had no Iraq-related posts during the sampling dates. After regression, other variables are insignificant, but blog links (B = .085, b = .432, p , .01) and reporting posts (B=.912, b=.367, p , .01) have a significant effect in predicting incoming links from other blogs. In other words, an increasing number of incoming links from other blogs are significantly predicted by a higher percentage of reporting posts and use of links to other blogs. One nominal variable, blogger background, was also examined. A post hoc ANOVA using Tukey found significant differences in the incoming link means for different professional backgrounds (F = 3.504, df = 5, p , .01). Academics and journalists had more success at attracting links compared to the unknown and technology categories (see Figure 7). Possible explanations for this result are offered in the discussion and conclusions section. The second and third research questions involve a comparison of liberal war bloggers and conservative war bloggers. The second question required a network analysis of the blogs and links in our sample. From these data we mapped every connection between bloggers. The results appear in Figure 8 below. The results indicate two distinct spheres of influence with some interaction in the middle. The results are similar to the study of the political blogosphere as a whole conducted by Adamic and Glance (2005). To interpret the diagram, we computed measures of network centrality. For degree centrality, two liberal blogs (Atrios and Matthew Yglesias) and one conservative blog (Instapundit) emerged as centers, although when outward links were ignored, Atrios was the dominant hub. While Atrios is clearly the center of the liberal war blogosphere, he is not well-connected to the conservative side. Another measure of centrality is betweenness. Nodes sitting between multiple other nodes score well on this measure. Atrios also does well here when all links are considered, but three other blogs have more betweenness centrality when only incoming links are considered. Those blogs—MatthewYglesias.com, Instapundit.com, and WashingtonMonthly.com—hold key positions in the network because they connect two otherwise distant halves, the conservative and liberal spheres. The closeness measures also rate MatthewYglesias and Instapundit highly (see Table 3). The third research question concerns differences between the conservative and liberal blogs. On most of the variables we measured (authorship, post types, affect, 300

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.119 2.074 2.009 2.017 .185 2.027 .023 .010 .072 .184 2.067 2.082 2.090 2.092 2.205 2.068 2.268* .107 2.155 .066 .072 .114 .023 .044 2.172 .132 2.259* 2.114 2.224* .070

Note: * Significant at p , .05 (two-tailed)

Authorship Gender Politics Post Length Surveillance Posts Opinon Posts Reporting Posts Affect Responsive-ness Outgoing Blog Links Outgoing Media Links Incoming Links 2.147 2.129 2.110 .139 .067 2.111 2.161 2.092 .399* .376* 2.331* .148 .322* .824* .299* .548* 2.047 2.133 .756* .734* .633*

2.041 .001 .440* .478* .615*

2.289* 2.053 2.258 2.079

Authorship Gender Politics Post Length Surveillance Opinion Reporting Affect

Table 1 Correlation matrix of quantitative variables (Pearson’s r values)

2.134 .075 2.135

.482* .687*

.425*

Response Blog Links Media Links

Table 2 Blog elements as predictors of incoming links from other bloggers (N = 61) Predictor Authorship Politics Words per post Surveillance Opinion Reporting Affect Responsiveness Gender Blog links Media links

B

b

t

Sig.

2.221 2.080 .000 .004 .036 .912 2.301 2.451 2.143 .085 2.020

2.080 2.053 .058 .019 .151 .367 2.066 2.067 2.075 .432 2.152

2.792 2.515 .490 .088 .631 3.364 2.664 2.686 2.756 2.984 2.527

.432 .609 .626 .931 .531 .002* .510 .496 .454 .004* .601

Note: R = .780, R-Square = .608, d.f. = 60, F = 6.922, p , .001

responsiveness, length of posts, and number of posts), there were no significant differences between the conservative and liberal blogs. However, there were some differences in the types of links the bloggers provided. Blogs coded as very conservative were twice as likely to link to other blogs as were blogs coded as liberal or very liberal. Conversely, blogs coded as very liberal were more than twice as likely to link to media sites as blogs coded as conservative or somewhat conservative. These results lend support to the notion that conservatives distrust the mainstream media more

Figure 7 Incoming links by background 302

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Figure 8 Iraq War blogosphere from sample data Note: Blue = liberal, red = conservative, purple = moderate. Node size is proportional to the number of incoming links.

than liberals do. Some differences in the use of specific media were also noted. While the New York Times and Washington Post were the most linked-to media overall, a finding also reported by Adamic and Glance (2005), liberal bloggers were more likely to link to these media than were conservative bloggers. However, news sites at Fox and Yahoo were more likely to be cited by conservative bloggers.

Discussion and Conclusions

Our examination of 79 blogs and 899 posts concerning the war in Iraq revealed several patterns that shed light on the evolution of networks and suggest ways in which the increasing influence of blogs may shape news flows in the future. If we cast the Iraq War blogosphere as an ‘‘issue public,’’ it is not one that resembles the general population. Bloggers on this topic were overwhelmingly male, with 99% of posts coded as such. This finding echoes previous research that found filter blogs more often created by males than females (Herring, Kouper, et al., 2004; Trammell & Keshelashvili, 2005). The bloggers in our sample were also Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 290–310 ª 2006 International Communication Association

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Table 3 Centrality measures for the war blog network BLOG

ALL LINKS

INCOMING LINKS

Degree Betweenness Closeness Degree Betweenness Closeness Atrios MatthewYglesias InstaPundit AndrewSullivan TalkingPointsMemo OxBlog EdDriscoll WashingtonMonthly Xoverboard Xnerg JuanCole LeanLeft veiled4allah PowerlineBlog WarInContext NeedleNose WindsOfChange VodkaPundit LittleGreenFootballs Toteota ShotInTheDark ThisModernWorld FollowMeHere Flagrancy WinterSpeak

7 7 7 5 6 6 5 4 2 2 2 2 2 3 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

91.9 80.4 71.9 56.7 49.0 37.9 34.9 33.0 28.4 23.0 23.0 11.3 9.3 2.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

82 72 76 82 77 76 86 78 85 103 93 83 87 88 126 105 99 94 109 99 105 105 100 116 105

7 3 5 5 4 4 2 3 0 0 2 0 0 3 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

43.5 90.0 84.5 0 25.0 45.5 20.5 81.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

363 347 352 627 360 355 359 353 355 351 629 355 370 629 650 375 364 361 631 365 626 375 372 626 626

highly educated, a significant percentage holding graduate or law degrees. Three professional backgrounds emerged as the most common: academics, professional writers or journalists, and those working in the technology industry. The first two groups proved to be very successful at acquiring links from other war bloggers; the third was decidedly not. The quality of writing, although not measured for this study, is likely a significant predictor of success in the blogosphere. Most of the posts in our sample (97%) were coded as either opinion or surveillance, with opinion being the most common. Only 2% of posts were categorized as reporting. While war bloggers were not very involved in creating original reporting, they were linking to it. Half of all links in the sample went to online news stories and another 10% went to news editorials. Only 23% of links went to other blogs, despite the perception by some that the blogosphere is insular. These findings are similar to those of other researchers who have examined this issue (Herring, Scheidt, et al., 2005; Reese, Rutigliano, Hyun, & Jeong, 2005). 304

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Our study revealed several other variables associated with acquiring incoming links. These included use of links to other blogs, opinion posts, reporting posts, surveillance posts, and links to media sites. Being female was negatively associated with acquiring links on this topic. A multiple regression analysis revealed two variables as the key predictors of incoming links: links to other blogs and reporting posts. The first finding is perhaps to be expected, in as much as the culture of blogging promotes reciprocity. The latter finding is very interesting, primarily because there were so few reporting posts in the sample, only 20. Nevertheless, it was a powerful predictor of incoming links. This result bodes well for the future of original reporting as opposed to hearsay and opinion. If blogs that engage in original reporting are rewarded with links and more traffic, we should expect this type of activity to increase over time. The prevalence of links to mainstream news sites in blogs is another indicator of the continuing relevance of sites that produce original reporting. Finally, the mapping of the Iraq war blogosphere revealed two distinct halves but also a fairly robust cluster of blogs that serve as conduits between the sides. Although it is clear that many bloggers on each side choose to isolate themselves by linking only to ideological compatriots and to media supportive of their point of view, there is at least a place in the middle where ideas can be debated and, possibly, positions changed. The findings of this study are limited by the design and scope of the project. The focus of this study is on political blogs, which represent only part of the broader blogosphere. Additionally, a network was constructed based solely on posts about the war in Iraq that were published on 16 systematically selected days over the study period. Posts about other topics, or those appearing during other time periods, may reveal different patterns. Nevertheless, we believe that the two primary predictors of incoming links identified by multiple regression analysis, use of outgoing links, and original reporting, are significant and worthy of further study.

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Appendix The War Blog Sample AndrewSullivan.com Annezook.com Atrios.blogspot.com Barder.com/ephems Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 290–310 ª 2006 International Communication Association

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Baseballcrank.com Bespacific.com Betsyspage.blogspot.com Biased-BBC.blogspot.com Blogleft (www.Gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/blogger.php) Blogs.salon.com/0001561/ Bostonsteamer.livejournal.com Brothersjudd.com/blog Chris.quietlife.net Condoleezzariceonline.blogspot.com Conservativeobserver.blogspot.com Conwebwatch.tripod.com Denmother.blogspot.com Eddriscoll.com Evetushnet.com Feelinglistless.blogspot.com Flagrancy.net Hawspipe.blogspot.com Heylisten.blogspot.com Imao.us Instapundit.com Isfullofcrap.com Ishkabible.com Jcrue.blogspot.com Juancole.com Leanleft.com Lies.com Littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog Lotusmedia.org Maikimo.net/weblog Mandelinople.com Marag.livejournal.com Matthewmaynard.net MatthewYglesias.com Metafilter.com Moxie.nu/blog.php Muhajabah.com/islamicblog/veiled4allah.php Needlenose.com Newsdissector.org Oxblog.blogspot.com Parapundit.com Pekingdork.blogspot.com Pekingduck.org Pixelscribbles.com/journal Polipundit.com

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Polizeros.com Powerlineblog.com Proteinwisdom.com Rjwaldmann.blogspot.com Ryanhorn.com Seanmeade.blogspot.com Sergesblog.blogspot.com Shotinthedark.info Sideshow.me.uk Terrorstrikesagain.com Thebarristers.com/weblog/blogger.html Thepete.com Theworld.com/;emg/followme.html Thismodernworld.com Tnr.com/etc.mhtml Toteota.blogspot.com Trommetter.com/log Twerpette.blogspot.com Users.ox.ac.uk/;magd1368/weblog/blogger.html Vodkapundit.com Warincontext.org Warliberal.com Washingtonmonthly.com Windsofchange.net Winterspeak.com Xnerg.blogspot.com Xoverboard.com Xrrf.blogspot.com

About the Authors

Mark Tremayne is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on journalism in the new media environment. Tremayne is editor of the book Blogging, Citizenship and the Future of Media (Routledge). Address: School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1000, Austin, Texas, 78712-0113 USA Nan Zheng is a master’s student in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include online community and gender studies of Internet use. Address: School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1000, Austin, Texas, 78712-0113 USA Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 290–310 ª 2006 International Communication Association

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Jae Kook Lee is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include new technology and social effects, public opinion and media effects, and strategic communication. Address: School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1000, Austin, Texas, 78712-0113 USA Jaekwan Jeong is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in new media technologies and formation of public opinion via alternative media. Address: School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1000, Austin, Texas, 78712-0113 USA

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