[Air-L] blog analysis

[Stuart Shulman]

Journal of Information Technology & Politics v.4, n.3

"Political Blogs: Transmission Belts, Soapboxes, Mobilizers or
Conversation Starters?"

Author: Kevin Wallsten

Abstract

This paper makes an initial attempt to situate political blogging
alongside other forms of political participation by asking the
question: how do political bloggers actually use their blogs? More
specifically, this paper relies on a detailed content analysis of
5,000 less popular and 5,000 A-list political blog posts over the
course of the 2004 campaign in order to determine whether political
bloggers use their blogs primarily as "soapboxes," "transmission
belts," "mobilizers," or "conversation starters." The results
presented here suggest that although political blogs are used to make
opinion statements far more often than they are used to mobilize
political action, to request feedback from readers, or to pass along
information produced by others, blog use changes significantly in
response to key political events. To be more precise, less popular
political bloggers were significantly more likely to mobilize
political action on Election Day, and all bloggers—regardless of
popularity—showed a greater propensity to seek feedback from their
readers on the days of the presidential debates and in the weeks
immediately following the election. Political blogging, in short, is a
complex form of political participation that blends hypertext links,
opinionated commentary, calls to political action, and requests for
feedback in different ways at different moments in time.

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:45 PM, stefania vicari <s.vicari at reading.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi! Please, can anyone suggest any literature on blog analysis? I mean to
> apply frame analysis on a set of subject-related blogs but I would like to
> have some more background.
>
> Thanks!
> stefania
> --
> Stefania Vicari
> Visiting PhD student
> Emory University
> Department of Sociology
> 1555 Dickey Drive, Suite 225
> Atlanta, GA 30322
> U.S.A.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>



-- 
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Massachusetts Amherst
http://people.umass.edu/stu/
stu at polsci.umass.edu

Editor, Journal of Information Technology & Politics
http://www.jitp.net

Director, QDAP-UMass
http://people.umass.edu/stu/QDAP-UMass/

Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government
http://www.umass.edu/digitalcenter/