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Editor Login
Convener in chief:
David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)
Editors:
Stanley Wasserman
(Current Trends, Methodology, Social Networks)
Guy Stuart
(Economic Sociology, Finance)
David Gibson
(Social Networks, Interaction, Theory)
Allan Friedman
(Simulations)
Jukka-Pekka Onnela
(Methodology, Social Networks, Technology)
Nathan Eagle
(Technology, Social Computing, Powerlaws, Current Trends)
Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing) Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Government 20)
Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)
Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Government 20, Citizen Relationship Management)
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Recent Comments
- Re: Network picture of attacks on online townhall report
By: foton
Date: Dec 29, 2009 7:48 PM - Re: Network picture of attacks on online townhall report
By: furious
Date: Nov 5, 2009 2:54 PM - Re: Network picture of attacks on online townhall report
By: David Allen
Date: Nov 4, 2009 9:36 AM
Notification
« Papers on online deliberative field experiments | Main | Following the digital breadcrumbs... »
1 November 2009
Network picture of attacks on online townhall report
Readers of this blog will know that last week I summarized an NSF and Harvard funded report on which I was lead author on online townhalls. Our findings included: if a Member of Congress reaches out to constituents in an online forum, it will reach people who tend not to participate in politics, and especially individuals who are frustrated with the political system, it will affect those constituents' views of the Member and increase their policy knowledge and political engagement. Well, this was picked up on by Senator Tom Coburn (who is trying to defund the Political Science program in NSF) last Wednesday who hammered the report as a waste of taxpayer money. A flyer his staff passed out at a briefing we conducted to Congressional staff on Friday captures the spirit of the critique:
(would be interested in the provenance of the picture, in case any readers know)
At the moment I will not address the merits of the criticisms, but focus instead on the interesting diffusion process that followed from the initial criticism from Coburn. Each day it was picked up by another few blogs. A quote from John Stossel provides a sense of the tone of the postings: "This summer's town hall meetings made many congressmen and senators uncomfortable. No worries. The sycophants they fund have used your tax money to fund a study that advises politicians how they can avoid seeing you altogether." Initially, I would infer, the first few blogs must have been on some distribution list from Coburn's office (i.e., they weren't just watching his website) because there were quotations from materials from Coburn that were not on his website. Thereafter you could see how different blogs picked up on the story, typically quoting or copying from another blog. So what one sees is a signal propagation process through the blogs. And as the signal propagates it evolves. Thus, for example, Stossel quotes from the Heritage blog, but then adds his distinct emphasis. The link and copying structure reflects the attention each blogger is paying to other blogs, however one would guess that each blog has a different but overlapping audience. Here is a picture of the diffusion process to date:
Node colors correspond to dates (28: white, 29: light gray, 30: dark gray). Time flows left to right, where the variations within each day reflect publication time of day, but only in an "eyeballing" sense. Link weights are encoded white: explicit mention, black: shared text, grey: both. Arrows point from destination node to source
What one cannot see, but is certainly reflected here somehow is that there is an interpersonal network among these bloggers (and relevant nonbloggers). However, this micro case study does suggest ways that one might disentangle the informational ecosystem among blogs, by looking at shared text, link structure, and to look at it dynamically and by content. If you know of interesting papers along these lines, please feel free to post in comments. One relevant, freshly minted paper, is:
Posted by David Lazer at November 1, 2009 7:02 PM
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