Some More Eyecandy from IssueCrawler

Snurb — Friday 30 March 2007 21:53
Politics | Blogs and Blogging | Participatory Journalism and Citizen Engagement (ARC Linkage) |

Hot on the heals of my research into blog coverage of the David Hicks case, some more of my IssueCrawler crawls have completed recently. Eventually (when a number of followp-up crawls I'm planning for the coming weeks also complete), I'll analyse them in some more detail, but for now, here are a few preliminary observations. Larger images of the network graphs are on Flickr; click the respective images to see them. I've also uploaded the interactive SVG graphs; you'll need the Adobe SVG viewer plugin in Internet Explorer to display them correctly...

"Brian Burke" Crawl

This maps the recent controversy over former West Australian premier turned disgraced lobbyist Brian Burke; the Australian government has run a concerted but fairly unsuccessful effort to draw links between Burke and federal opposition leader Kevin Rudd. The crawls map discussion on this in the blogosphere; seeded from the most recent 100 posts referencing "Brian Burke" as listed on Technorati (and filtered for posts on the other Brian Burke, who is an ice hockey administrator in North America). Crawls completed on 27 March 2007.

2007-03-25 Brian Burke crawl 2 (a little authority; inlinks)

2007-03-25 Brian Burke crawl 2 (a little authority; centrality)

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "a little authority" according to Technorati; node size indicates number of inlinks received by a node. [SVG]

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "a little authority" according to Technorati; node size indicates the centrality of a node. [SVG]


2007-03-25 Brian Burke crawl 1 (some authority; inlinks)

2007-03-25 Brian Burke crawl 1 (some authority; centrality)

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "some authority" according to Technorati; node size indicates number of inlinks received by a node. [SVG]

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "some authority" according to Technorati; node size indicates the centrality of a node. [SVG]


These crawls indicate a reasonably pronounced clustering; there seems to be a notable division between left-wing and right-wing blogs, with the former clustering around sites such as Road to Surfdom and Larvatus Prodeo, the latter around Tim Blair. It appears as if the left-wing clusters is significantly larger than the right-wing one; this may be an indication of the socioeconomic makeup of the Australian blogosphere (or of heavy Internet users in Australia more generally), but could also be a reaction to the long-term dominance of right-wing politicians on the federal level of Australian politics - if political blogging is mainly a critical exercise, perhaps there's less to blog about if you broadly agree with government policy?

WorkChoices Crawl

This maps discussion in the Australian blogosphere around the first anniversary of the federal government's "WorkChoices" package of industrial relations reform laws. Seeded from the most recent posts referencing either "WorkChoices" or "Work Choices" as listed on Technorati. Crawls completed on 29 March 2007.


Past 30 Days:

2007-03-28 WorkChoices (last 30 days, a little authority; inlinks)

2007-03-28 WorkChoices (last 30 days, a little authority; centrality)

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "a little authority" over the last 30 days, according to Technorati; node size indicates number of inlinks received by a node. [SVG]

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "a little authority" over the last 30 days, according to Technorati; node size indicates the centrality of a node. [SVG]

2007-03-28 WorkChoices (last 30 days, some authority; inlinks)

2007-03-28 WorkChoices (last 30 days, some authority; centrality)

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "some authority" over the last 30 days, according to Technorati; node size indicates number of inlinks received by a node. [SVG]

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "some authority" over the last 30 days, according to Technorati; node size indicates the centrality of a node. [SVG]




Past 3 Days Only:

2007-03-28 WorkChoices (last 3 days, a little authority; inlinks)

2007-03-28 WorkChoices (last 3 days, a little authority; centrality)

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "a little authority" over the last 3 days, according to Technorati; node size indicates number of inlinks received by a node. [SVG]

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "a little authority" over the last 3 days, according to Technorati; node size indicates the centrality of a node. [SVG]



2007-03-28 WorkChoices (last 3 days, some authority; inlinks)

2007-03-28 WorkChoices (last 3 days, some authority; centrality)

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "some authority" over the last 3 days, according to Technorati; node size indicates number of inlinks received by a node. [SVG]

Crawl seeded from posts with at least "some authority" over the last 3 days, according to Technorati; node size indicates the centrality of a node. [SVG]


Interesting to see that here, the left/right divide isn't anywhere as pronounced. Additionally, we also see the presence of a number of relevant non-blog sites at least on the periphery (Australian Labor Party, Greens, Rightsatwork). These are likely to have been linked into the blog discussion as sources of information rather than as active participants. Sites of the Coalition parties, and Australian Federal Government Websites, are conspicuous only by their absence, though...


Obviously, much more work yet to be done in analysing these results in some detail. I also hope to repeat the WorkChoices crawl next week, and the week after, to track how the central cluster of the blog discussion may have shifted over time. More soon!

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