by jon on
Feb 29, 2008 at 9:50 am
Article: The Blogosophere as a Public Arena, Social Problems, February 2008.
Summary: In an age of mass media and giant corporate news agencies, many optimistically look to the internet as a new venue for non-elites to make their voices heard and push issues into the public discourse.
Ray Maratea analyzes the role blogs play in the competition for public attention and finds that blogs do, in fact, offer many advantages. Thanks to the speed at which blogs can be updated and the ability of blog posts to quickly spread through the internet via hyperlinking, blogs can be an effective means of drawing public attention to issues.
However, in other respects blogs aren’t as revolutionary as they may seem. For example, the blogosophere is very hierarchical, with a small number of blogs drawing most of the traffic. Additionally, blogs tend to use the same criteria as traditional media when deciding what is deserving of attention, such as drama and novelty.
by jon on
Feb 29, 2008 at 9:49 am
Article: Cross-ideological discussions among conservative and liberal bloggers, Public Choice, January 2008.
Summary: On the one hand, the internet provides people with access to an extraordinarily diverse range of information and opinions. On the other hand, the internet can also bring like-minded people together into isolated, homogeneous communities devoid of dissent and diversity. Which side wins out?
Eszter Hargittai, Jason Gallo and Matthew Kane look at political blogs and examine how frequently conservative bloggers link to liberal bloggers and vice versa. They followed 40 of the top political blogs (20 conservative, 20 liberal) for three week-long periods over the course of ten months. They have several interesting findings:
- In terms of blogroll links, conservatives are more likely to link to liberal blogs than liberal bloggers are to link to conservative blogs.
- Within blog posts, about 12% of outgoing links from conservative blogs went to liberal blogs, and about 16% of outgoing links from liberal blogs went to conservative blogs.
- Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most common format of these cross-ideological links follow a “straw-man” format, simply dismissing the other sides’ views
- However, when blog posts actually engage the substance of the linked article, conservative bloggers were actually more likely to agree (14%) than disagree (12%), while liberal bloggers only expressed substantive agreement 5% of the time.
In short, they found some support for both faces of the internet, and also found some interesting differences between conservative and liberal bloggers.
If this is interesting to you, this article is part of a special issue on blogs and politics.
by jesse on
Feb 25, 2008 at 11:41 am
Article: Incorporating Ritual Into Greedy Institution Theory: The Case of Devotion in Amateur Chess. The Sociological Quarterly, Winter 2008
Summary: Ever wonder why the kid who gets beaten up for his love of chess keeps coming back to the game that is the source of his grief? Antony J. Puddephatt thinks the answer lies in examining amatuer chess as a “greedy instituion” that works through five elements ((1) isolation from competing social spheres; (2) encapsulation within a symbolic status structure; (3) a collective feeling of elite status; (4) trials of worthiness; and (5) prestructured ritual) to foster commitment amongst players.