Irish Blog Research

Results of the raffle

2006-07-24T16:16:00.000+01:00

I finally got around to raffling the 50 euro amazon certificate yesterday - kids helped pick a name out of the hat - all very ceremoniously it has to be said.

And the lucky winner was.......Mick Fealty of Slugger O'Toole fame.....so congrats to Mick - 'don't spend it all in the one shop'.....

I submitted my final draft - (bit of an oxymoron if you ask me) to DCU today - 2 soft copies and an electronic version. Apparently it gets corrected/marked/OK'd or whatever and then they give the go ahead (or otherwise) to submit hard copies in about a months time. I got confused - (I think it was the 'final draft' bit that did it) and thought the soft copies had to be submitted earlier in July and the hard-bound ones on the 31st July - anyway to cut a long boring story short, I actually ended up submitting early - woohoo!- probably the first time I've ever submitted something early.

Anyway off to catch up with my blog reading and to see if I can track down any family and friends..........

2006-06-30T11:17:00.000+01:00

Am busy writing up at the minute having gotten past the 'blank page' phenomenon, just about. Have to have a first draft to my supervisor on Monday. Can see now questions I should have asked and didn't and questions I shouldn't have bothered asking but did, but you live and learn and so says Robson.... "Lessons to be learned from the conduct of the study (remember that you should learn something not only substantially about the topic of the study, but also how to do studies - you are not expected to be perfect, but you are expected to learn)"....so that gets me off the hook.....but then this is from the same book that quotes the BSA's guidelines on Anti-Sexist Language which recommends rather than using 'man/mankind' use person, people, human beings....ok so far......'manhours' use workhours....hmmm......'forefathers' use ancestors......'master copy', use top copy, original...oh dear.................

Robson, C., 2002, Real World Research, 2nd Edition

2006-06-18T23:09:00.000+01:00

Haven’t blogged for 9 days – probably the longest since I started this blog. I have been so bogged down with analysing the data from the survey. It has taken so much longer than I thought. I reckoned that I would have all the statistics done in a week, but it is now 2 weeks since I started them. The Likert questions (strongly agree, agree etc) have been a nightmare – why did I include so many! – I thought I was nearly finished with the stats yesterday, only to realise that I had overlooked a test I should have carried out, and it has taken me a day and a half to get back to where I thought I was Saturday lunchtime. One step forward and two steps back….As an aside do you know that you are supposed to spell the numbers zero through nine and the numbers 10 and above should be written as numbers…the things I got by without knowing till this age. This latest revelation is courtesy of Psycology with Style.

I have only 1 more question to analyse - the open-ended question “Please give some reasons for why blogging has been slow to catch on in Ireland?” Of course I committed felony number 1 of research - I included a ‘loaded question’ in my survey and on just a cursory look at the responses, 29% of respondents don’t agree that blogging has been slow to catch on. The cursory look also shows that many people feel that poor broadband availability has been a factor in blogging not being more mainstream.

I haven’t been able to keep up with my blog reading either and it’s a very strange sensation. You wonder if you are missing out on some major discussion that you should know about. I used to worry that I was missing out on some major article in the papers on blogging which would be useful for this research, but got to realise fairly quickly that rather than having to scour the papers, an article about blogging would be quickly flagged by someone in the blogosphere. Related to this, do you know if you miss an issue of the Business Post they will post (as in snail mail) one out to you free gratis. Found this out when I tried to get my hands on a copy of the Business Post after Damien flagged an article in the ‘Focus on Cork’ they did a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t find anyone I knew who had the article – This is more a reflection on the sad friendless person that I am after 3 years of this course rather the popularity of the Business Post. Anyway to get back to my falling behind with my blog reading - I’ve missed the whole CJH debate which I’m sure raged. I’m hoping de lads will have been blogging about the World Cup or have been too busy watching it to blog and that I will catch up a bit faster.

I now have over 150 pages of tables, figures and diagrams which I have to start writing about sooner rather than later. My first draft of the whole thing is due in two weeks. In a way it’s just as well the deadline is so close. I reckon there’s a Phd there for someone who has the time and energy. I need to reclaim my weekends. Went to the Yamamori restaurant in Georges Street this evening to celebrate my brother-in-laws birthday. Sadly I nearly had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from my computer under protestation and I was somewhere else most of the time….surrounded by t-tests, and chi-square tests and significant differences. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was driving (being Father’s day), so couldn’t even fall into my customary glass of wine….but how sad.

I haven’t even gotten around to sorting out the 50 euro Amazon voucher but I will.

Yours....under pressure....

Vital Statistics

2006-06-09T11:17:00.000+01:00

Hmmm...would be interesting to see if the title gets me more hits..... Have been neglecting my blog and have been falling behind on my blog reading too - bloglines notifier beeps accusingly at me.....I closed the survey on Sunday after two weeks and have been blogged down in statistics since.

I did a year of statistics *way* back in the early 80's as part of a course I did in another incarnation and one of last years modules - Research Methods - had a significant statistics component. Have to say thank God for Excel's statistical add-ins - Analysis Tookpak and PHStat. You still have to get your head around the concepts, the different tests and assumptions etc, but there is no comparison between the effort involved in doing the computations now compared to working it out on a calculator way back when God was a child. Statisticians today must be sitting around with their feet up on their desks compared to years ago. Only joking statisticans, please don't take offense....Am also using a very good book - Statistics for Managers using Microsoft Excel by Levine et al (which includes PHStat add-in for Excel), which is an excellent help .

Must organise to 'raffle' the 50 euro voucher from Amazon this weekend. Think I'll involve the kids and do a 'real' names out of the hat job

2006-05-31T10:55:00.000+01:00

The plan is to leave the survey open/available for 2 weeks which will be until next Sunday. So far the response rate has been 59.45% which I am happy with. Opinions vary as to what a good response rate is - Wikipedia states that with online surveys response rates were sometimes as high as 90% before 2000, but have been dropping since then and are now typically between 2% - 30%. A Survey of Visualisation Tools in the Social Sciences suggests that a response rate to questionnaire surveys of around 20 to 25 per cent is good. Earlier studies have shown that topic interest has an inpact on survey response behavior and I would argue that Irish bloggers have a keen interest in the topic of blogging.

However as Bosnjak points out there are response behaviours with web-based surveys which would not have to be considered with more traditional surveys where the three possible response behaviours were unit nonresponse (refers to the complete loss of a survey due to inaccessibility, refusal or inability to respond), item nonresponse (when surveys are partially completed and returned) and complete response. Bosnjak talks of 7 different types of behaviour - complete responders, unit nonresponders, answering drop-outs, lurkers, lurking drop-outs, item nonresponders, iten non-responding drop-outs. Awful names - the last type represents individuals who view some questions, answer some but not all of the questions viewed and also quit prior to the end of the survey. Bosnjak aruges that this typology of response pattern is a more accurate depiction of actual events in Web surveys than the relatively basic categorisation of complete participation, unit nonresponse, or item nonresponse.

Anyway I digress. My point is that while the response rate superficially looks good, it may transpire that many respondents have dropped out or chose to answer only some of the questions. This would not surprise me in the least as the quesionnaire was long and some of the questions were quite detailed. Anyway I'll address that when I collect the results. I am using this time while the survey is still open to get to know my estranged family again :-)

A big thank you

2006-05-25T13:34:00.000+01:00

I am much indebted to the people who took the survey which I circulated to a sample of bloggers last Sunday. I will be forever in their debt for their generosity in terms of the giving of their time (it was a long survey) and the many positive comments I received. My dissertation would be dead in the water had they not agreed to participate. Following feedback from some bloggers a couple of issues arose:

It was an oversight not to let people know when I contacted them, how I had gotten their contact details. The sample was taken from bloggers on Planet Journals and irishblogs.info. I only contacted people who had contact information (either email address or contact form) on their blog or on a webpage linked to on their blog.

A question arose as to the scope of the project. I am primarily looking at blogging in Ireland in terms of the questions asked in the questionnaire - questions such as
who is blogging in Ireland in terms of sex, age etc.
what topics are Irish bloggers writing about?
how active are Irish blogs e.g. frequency of update, age of blog
How interactive are Irish blogs e.g. how prevalent is the use of the comment
facility for feedback?
what tools/services (blogware) are being used by Irish bloggers for editing,
organising and publishing weblogs,
why do Irish people blog?

I draw very much on previous literature and research on the blogosphere in general. My own perception was that while Ireland's blogging community is very active and committed, the general public has been slow to adopt this form of online communication. The sample was taken from Planet Journals and irishblogs.info. An obvious limitation of this and therefore a limitation of the study is that these services by and large require manual registration and there is no means of determining how many Irish sites don't choose to be listed. However while the conclusions may not be generalizable it is hoped that there will be sufficient data to make some level of interpretation.

Business blogs and blogs belonging to politicians were excluded as I am primarily interested in personal blogs. Also no Bebo users were included. There were a couple of reasons for this. Firstly my research proposal was submitted and the research underway before the popularity of Bebo among Irish teenagers came to the fore in March/April (well at least that's when I became aware of it). Also other studies indicate that teenage bloggers obtain different gratifications from blogging than adults do. I reckon the popularity of Bebo would be a very interesting research area but in its own right.

A number of people expressed an interest in seeing the finished product. I have taken their details and will follow up when I finish.

And what do you know.....the rain has finally stopped

mary

Rainy Sunday

2006-05-21T15:41:00.000+01:00

Haven't posted in about a week. Have been really busy harvesting contact addresses for Irish blogs. Have just contacted a sample of 218 bloggers asking if they could spare the time to respond to a quesionnaire on blogging habits and motivations. Had an idea of contacting owners of inactive blogs, (those not updated in two months) with a view to establishing what makes people abandon blogging but not unexpectantly very few of these blogs have contact addresses and even if they have, the liklihood is that the contact addresses may have been abandoned too.

God, this weather would put years on you....think I'll bring the kids to the cinema.

2006-05-12T16:59:00.000+01:00

Haven't posted in a few days. My broadband connection@home is down more or less permanently now.....which is really bad timing as I am just at the point of trying to harvest email addresses from oodles of blogs. Have been staying back at work trying to get it done and will have to come into work over the weekend as dialup is just too slow :-( - what a bummer............

anyway inital crawling of blogs would seem to indicate that the amount of information people reveal about themselves including contact information is not uninfluenced by the blogging software/tools they use and Blogger bloggers are coming out on top as regards the amount of information they reveal. Also not surprisingly there are more male bloggers than female bloggers.

I flatlined

2006-05-08T13:55:00.000+01:00

Have been having some network problems at home. I have had wireless broadband from the Hill of Tara, via a community wireless network scheme from TaraWan since last December. It has been very stable since I got it until last Thursday when it uncharacteristically started to grind to a halt and then finally gave up the ghost. It was a combination of things - seems my box 'thingy' on the roof flatlined for a few hours. It also seems that as the trees get leaves I am running into line-of-sight problems. Anyway the flatlining problem just went away and moving me to a different channel (thank you Daniel!) has strengthened my signal and sorted me for the moment. I hope I'm not just going to have broadband when the trees are bare..... I have lots of crawling of blogs to do over the next week or so looking for contact information so I’m hoping my connection stays stable.

A Draughty Draft

2006-05-05T16:19:00.000+01:00

Just a note for myself re what I’m at. Its times like this I wish blogger had a feature where you could write notes for yourself without having them appearing as a post as such…..I suppose I could use the comment feature and then I wouldn’t have to bore everyone else to death.…..or turn off my rss feed or whatever.

Anyway spent the weekend doing up a very draughty draft of my literature review and it just wasn’t happening for me….thoughts just weren’t flowing as they’re meant to L. My reading may have too broad and unfocused. Anyway at least it’s just the first draft and there’s time for improvement. Realise now I should have started writing something about a month ago.

Sent an abridged version of a questionnaire out to members of my course yesterday as a sort of pilot study – (as you do…..). Used surveymonkey.com which is an online survey tool for designing questionnaires and collecting/analysing responses etc. Now maybe these sort of tools have been around for ages and I haven’t been aware of them and maybe there’s better ones than surveymonkey but I have to say I was impressed – it made it all so easy. With these sort of tools becoming so readily available, I couldn’t help feeling that we will all be subjected to a barrage of surveys and naval gazing exercises, (just like what I’m at) in no time.

Another tool I find invaluable is Endnote reference manager. Had heard its name bandied about for years, but hadn’t used it until now. Very small learning curve (albeit that I’m probably using it at a very basic level). I have been customising fields to keep note of important points from articles that I have read – a bit like postit stickers, but easier to juggle around.

I'm just a lonely blog

2006-05-01T16:10:00.000+01:00

Perseus Development Corp. reported in 2003 that 66% of surveyed blogs on 8 leading blog-hosting services had not been updated in two months, representing, at the time, 2.72 million blogs that had been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. They put it down to the fact that blog-hosting services made it so easy to create a blog that many 'tire-kickers' felt no commitment to continuing the blogs they initiated.... (the old unable-to-commit chestnut :-) ). 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders with no postings on subsequent days.

Where r my moblogs gone?

2006-04-27T22:40:00.000+01:00

Txted couple of test posts2my blog d'other day-they've disappeared! Wat gives?

Telelogs

2006-04-27T11:18:00.000+01:00

My latest interesting albeit off-topic read was a paper to do with TeleLogging - the idea is that telelogs are targeted towards those we come across on a consistent basis but rather than establishing a direct line of communication, we maintain a relationship characterized as one of 'courteous detachment' i.e. we are known as 'familiar strangers' - (!). Familiar stangers have an "informal agreement to ignore one another without any penalty of disapproval by either party" and would include for example people we regularly see at a bus stop or whatever. The first implementation for mobile devices was tested on Nokia smart phones - all info was shared through a bluetooth connection and familiar strangers were automatically discovered by the MAC addresses of the bluetooth device and could then communicate via recorded messages.

Maybe its me but the whole notion sounds daft. The idea of some familiar stranger sending me a message via bluetooth at the bus stop some morning - an audio message to add insult to injury - to tell me that I look like crap this morning or that my roots need doing doesn't appeal to me. Why not come up to me if you're standing beside me. Anyway maybe I'm getting ratty in my old age or maybe I'm just downright unsociable but I think we're all too contactable already - I'd rather leave my familiar strangers as just that. I'm sure I'm missing the point or failing to see the bigger picture.........

Brian, D. and K. Karrie (2005). Telelogs: a social communication space for urban environments. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Human computer interaction with mobile devices \& services. Salzburg, Austria, ACM Press

Procrastinating

2006-04-27T10:47:00.000+01:00

Have to say I can identify with that girl's difficulty in getting into a rhythm with her PhD and getting down to writing anything. I am reading oodles of articles and writing copious notes in Endnote (great tool) and doing everything to avoid sitting down and getting started with the actual writing. Have decided that all is about to change and I am going to spend the weekend trying to break the back on the Literature Review - no doubt the sun will shine.........

eek

2006-04-24T14:14:00.000+01:00

am having problem with my atom feed and now things are hanging when I try to republish my blog. Just using this post as a test

Infectious topics, chatter and spikes......

2006-04-20T19:26:00.000+01:00

Read a paper today titled "Information Diffusion through Blogspace"1. The study looked at the dynamics of information propagation in the Blogosphere from two perspectives: -
(1) propogation from individual to individual, drawing on the theory of infections diseases (!) to model the flow. They were able to identify particular individuals who are highly effective at contributing to the spread of “infectious” topics.
(2) The study also looked at topic propagation from one blog to the next and introduced the notion of internally driven, sustained discussion called chatter; and externally induced (generally) sharp rises in postings called spikes. The study claimed that only rarely in blogospace is the formation of order (a spike) out of chaos (chatter) observed. In the study, the only 'sustained block re-posting meme' observed in the data consisted of the

“aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an elingsh uinervtisy it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae”

story which came out of nowhere, spiked and died in about 2 weeks (with most postings over a four-day period).

The paper was interesting albeit a bit heavy going, but snippets like the one above kept me reading. Another interesting finding was a profile of blog postings within a day and from day-to-day, normalized by the poster’s time zone. Sundays were low, Wednesdays high across blogs, for a total of 401,021 postings in the data set. The most frequent posting was at 10 am. There was a pronounced dip at 6 and 7 pm (which the researchers surmised was the commute home? dinner? Must-See-TV?), a plateau between 2 and 3 am and a global minimum at 5 am. Posting seemed to peak midweek, and dipped considerably on weekends......

Daniel, G., R. Guha, et al. (2004). Information diffusion through blogspace. Proceedings of the 13th international conference on World Wide Web. New York, NY, USA, ACM Press.

Anyone notice there's lots of places beginning with K in Kerry

2006-04-19T20:30:00.000+01:00

What a worthless observation. Anyway haven't done any blogging for a while due to the fact that I was down in Kerry with the family for a week. We rented a house in Killorglin and thankfully there was no internet connection so I had some enforced abstinence - without any withdrawal symptoms it has to be said. I hadn't been to Kerry for longer than I care to remember. We did all the touristy things - drove around the Ring of Kerry, the Gap of Dungloe, the Dingle Peninsula, visited Mucross house and Gardens in Killarney etc. There was lots of driving around, after lots of driving around to get there in the first place. The squabbling of the kids in the back, was alleviated by regular pit stops for seafood chowder and glasses of Guinness, Murphy's ice-creams etc. The kids got their hair braided in Dingle by a spot-on chap called Rickosha (not sure of the spelling but it was as in the bullet and not as in Rick O'Shea). That kept them happy for all of about 5 minutes - anyway I digress. The scenery is fabulous, particularly out beyond Dingle - out around Dún Chaoin overlooking the Blasket islands. Took lots of photos - must load a couple up on flickr - mainly to see how it's done.....I always feel slightly in awe taking photos of such breathtaking scenery - I know my pathetic attempts at photography never do it justice and still its just not the same settling for postcards....

Anyway it's back to the grindstone. You are supposed to feel refreshed and ready for action after a holiday - why do I always feel I want to go back.

2006-04-08T13:09:00.000+01:00

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam.
Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

how connected are you?

2006-04-05T22:41:00.000+01:00

Read a paper today (Bachnik, Szymczyk et al. 2005) which analysed blog networks and found that blog networks share characteristics with complex networks (cliques, 'small worlds' etc). Using graph theory the authors examined the linking patterns of approx 166500 blogs of three different Polish blogging services. They distinguished two different kinds of connections between blogs - weak (idols and fans) and strong (friends) . A connection was considered weak when there was only one 'edge' between blogs, going either from blog A to blog B or vice versa. A connection was considered strong when the link was reciprocated. They also measured average 'cliquity' (great term) for each service. Another great term introduced was eminence grise - while idol is a sociometric structure which describes a person who got a large number of positive choices, though making small number of choices by itself (i.e. lots of blogs linked to it, while it linked to few) - the person of eminence grise is the person that idol chooses to link to - the idols idol! I love it! So are you an idol, a person of eminence grise or unconnected like poor me..... Other basic sociometric structures presented were diads and triads.

I found the most interesting finding (apart from the sheer number of blogs - then again Poland has a popluation of around 38 million) was that 'sparsity' was the most apparent property of the examined blogs networks - most of the blogs - about 90% - were not connected with others at all. This was way higher than I would have expected. No surmising was done in the paper as to why this might have been so. I read somewhere at some stage (how's that for vague reference....) a theory put forward for why blogs might not link to other blogs - simply that some blog creation/editing tools didn't make linking to urls easy to do for non-techies. A simple explanation but a very plausible one I thought at the time. This is probably becoming less of a factor as blogging tools become more sophisticated.

Yet another article not that relevant to my research as I hadn't planned to do link analysis, but I couldn't resist the terminology......sad I know.....

Bachnik, W., S. Szymczyk, et al. (2005). "Quantitive and sociological analysis of blog networks." Acta Physica Polonica B 36(10): 3179-3191

rise of individualism

2006-03-30T16:43:00.000+01:00

I downloaded a ridiculous amount of articles from the library to do with weblogs and blogging generally. Turns out many of them aren't directly relevant to my research but they make for interesting reading none the less. One, "Radical Politics on the Net" talks about the rising prominence of individualism in society:-

"Castells has suggested that there is a rising prominence of individualism in society, that the individual has become more important than the collective. When this is combined with ICTs the result is a networked individualism where ‘individuals build their networks, online and off-line, on the basis of their interests,values, affinities, and projects’ rather than local place-based affinity. Such plurality in the choices of whom we connect with and the ability to connect regardless of geographical location could potentially aid activists’global interconnections. At the same time, however, there is a danger that within such a network society and post-modern culture, individuals would identify with multiple groups and have a weakened commitment to any one community, forever able to move on and find new ‘others’ to connect with. In such an environment, it is potentially difficult to generate the trust necessary for individuals to co-ordinate collective action'".

It's the way they tell 'em

Pickerill, J. (2006). "Radical Politics on the Net." Parliam Aff: gsl008.

rational-critical debate not dead yet

2006-03-29T23:23:00.000+01:00

Read an article today by Matthew D. Barton - "The future of rational-critical debate in online public spheres" which discussed the role of blogs, wikis and online discussion boards in enabling rational critical debate and their use as valuable tools for the creation and maintenance of a critical public sphere. Barton maintains that the Internet is losing its democraticizing features and is becoming more like newspapers and tv, "controlled from above by powerful multinational corporations who demand passivity from an audience of total consumers". Although early web pages were relatively simple in their design, modern web pages are becoming ever more complex, utilizing not only graphics and sounds but also more programming code. The Internet's "means of production" i.e. the ability to create and manage web sites is becoming ever more separated from the average user as powerful corporations find more ways to distinguish their web sites with expensive, high-end proprietary technology like Macromedia Flash.

Barton expresses hope in the increased use of three highly relevant online writing environments: blogs, discussion boards and wikis. These tools "offer a way for people to easily and cheaply publish their writings online and to enable rational-critical debate" - he sees these low-tech solutions as necessary for the formation of capable participants in a rational-critical debate.

Barton draws parallels between blogs and diaries and letters of the old bourgeois public sphere and between online bulletin boards and "eighteenth century salons, table societies and coffee shops that first saw the applicaiton of rational-critical debate to political and economical issues".

Barton, M. D. (2005). "The future of rational-critical debate in online public spheres." Computers and Composition 22(2): 177-190.

Politicans Blogging, or not, as the case may be

2006-03-28T14:59:00.000+01:00

Some feel that Irish media blogs need a big story to propel blog sites into public consciousness. Some believe that the big story may be the next General Election (Conghaile 2005). Irish Politicians participation in the Blogosphere has been abysmal to date with only 3 politicians taking the plunge. It will be interesting to see how many politicians will be blogging (and in any real sense as opposed to just reiterating the party-line) by the time the election comes around.

In Britain while a number of politicians blog, a recent article in Parliamentary Affairs provides insight into why mainstream political organisations have been unwilling to use new media creatively. Ward and Vedel claim:

“The institutional fragmentation of government and parliament is not necessarily conducive to fostering a coherent approach to information technology. IT tends to cross-cut the traditional bureaucratic sectorisation of Westminster and Whitehall leading to a lack of ownership and leadership. As Allan’s article reveals, in Parliament, for example, there is a high degree of division and also individualisation. Many complain of a lack of corporate culture in Westminster and a struggle to foster a collective identity because, parliaments essentially comprise individualised small businesses (MPs’ offices) each doing their own thing. Fragmentation is compounded by the poor reputation that IT has within government and parliament. As Margetts notes, the experiences of many government departments with IT projects have often been extremely difficult. Such experiences often lead to a latent technophobia that runs through many political institutions. In part, it also reflects the wider culture of politicians (very few of whom have any IT back-ground), who operate and win promotion through a very traditional partisan, adversarial, face-to-face culture. From local party meetings, parliamentary debates and doorstep canvassing, most UK politicians are still wedded to the adversarial cut and thrust style of politics. Politicians often seem to believe that there is little demand for ICT within the political system or that ICTs attract the wrong sort of people—cranks, spammers, single-issue fanatics and the already privileged middle class. Overall, the result is often a fear factor within mainstream institutions. For parties, parliaments and government departments, their IT failures produce unwelcome publicity and are scrutinised in a way that does not apply to the less institutionalised parts of the political world such as NSMs (new social movements), consequently they have more to lose. Not surprisingly, given the track record of government, there is a fear of making mistakes that has engendered a cautious approach to technology.”

It could have been written about Ireland…..

Conghaile, P. O. (2005). It's a Blog jam! Irish Independent Weekend. Dublin: 10-12.

Ward, S. and T. Vedel (2006). "Introduction: The Potential of the Internet Revisited." Parliam Aff: gsl014.

Conversations in the Blogosphere

2006-03-23T22:00:00.000Z

Came across a study today (Herring, Kouper et al. 2005)1 which investigated the extent to which and in what patterns, blogs are interconnected, taking as its point of departure randonly-selected blogs. They used "quantitative social network analysis, visualization of link patterns, and qualitative analysis of references and comments in pairs of reciprocally-linked blogs". They carried out the study because they claimed that findings by others e.g. Marlow (2004) that conversation among blogs is "completely connected" and Bloods requirement that a blog link to other blogs in order to be characterized as a blog focussed on a particular sub-type of blog, the so-called filter blog. However Herring et al claimed that only 12.6% of active blogs at the time were filters and that 48.8% contained no link to other weblogs at all. They were keen to investigate if the blogosphere would appear to be a completely connected coversation from the perspective of a random ordinary blog. Their results showed that most blogs contain no links or comments. Of those that did, filter blogs contain more links and link preferentially to A-list blogs, which are consequently overrepresented in the network. At the same time unexpected clusters of non A-list blogs emerged that were highty reciprocally-linked, forming topic-based communities. Direct manifestations of online conversation were found in both A-list and non A-list blogs, but varied in extent and nature according to blog topic and gender of writer. They concluded that the blogosphere is partially interconnected and that blog conversations, while occasionally intense, are the exception rather than the rule.

1Herring, S. C., I. Kouper, et al. (2005). Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis "From the Bottom Up". Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, Hawaii.

Plenty of Publicity

2006-03-15T21:17:00.000Z

There was plenty of publicity for the Irish Blogosphere surrounding the Blog Awards on Saturday night. The Irish Times featured a pre-event article on Friday by John Ihle followed by a post-event article by John on Monday. John is a blogger himself - on Back Seat Drivers - so at least the articles were well-informed unlike coverage in the past.

Rick O'Shea was interviewed about blogging on Dave Fannings show on Thursday evening and Damien Mulley contributed by phone. Dave Fanning has actually started his own blog here - woo hoo Dave - but whats this about you being 26? Sarah Carey spoke on Five Seven Live on Friday evening. I'm sure there were other references in MSM but these were just the ones I came across.

Would have loved to have gone to the Blog Awards in the Alexandra Hotel (just as a lurker of course - why am I such a lurker???) but due to family commitments I couldn't make it. I watched the video of it courtesy of Joe Drumgoole who posted it on YouTube - fair play Joe... great to see the live action - have to say made me sort of glad I didn't go.....everyone seemed so young....Let's just say I'm the wrong side of 40.....or about as '26' as Dave Fanning..... I haven't had a chance yet to listen to Jett Loes podcast of the event.

Fustar in "Where do we go from here"? raises very interesting issues in his post-awards reflections to do with identity, anonymity, participation, mainstreaming etc. that girl touches on the area of digital rights in the wake of her full name and pictures reproduced without her permission appearing on the web. Sinead Gleeson at Sigla Blog and Fiona de Londras at Mental Meanderings discuss female representation among bloggers.

Have to say I am very interested in the whole area of anonymity and the web - which allows people in certain internet environments e.g. chatrooms, muds, moos and now blogs to be what they aren't - the shy can be outgoing, the quiet can be bolshy etc. At one stage I wondered if anyone at all would turn up on the night of the awards - whether the thought of as Fustar so aptly put it bloggers 'exposing themselves (as it were) to public attention' might be a step too far for many people. I don't blame Twenty Major for sending a representative (if he did?) - not only does it add to the whole aura of 'mystery' surrounding his blog, but I reckon it would have been nigh impossible for him to have lived up to his blogging persona in RL (real life), though his friends might argue the point. I suppose I mean no matter how funny he was on the night he probably would still have been a disappointment - if that makes any sense.

Anyway I digress....time to do some real work....back to the online catalogues for some more articles....ZZZZzzzzz - Not as interesting as reading the blogs themselves

To Wordsworth

2006-03-09T22:45:00.000Z

Trawled through various online resources today collecting references and articles to mull over for the next while.......thanks to John Greening for providing something different in the midst of it all..........

To Wordsworth
On the bicentenary of the completion of The Prelude

The sonnets are ‘okay’, but if you could
imagine what a fog of teenage scorn
obscures The Prelude . . . if you had been born
last century, you might have understood –
a different revolution in your blood,
your room in Hawkshead blazing rock and porn,
poetry in the junkmail, your hair shorn,
tongue pierced and neck tattooed: you’d have been good
at English, though you would have stayed off school
to go to Glastonbury, taken dope
and doubtless knocked some French girl up again.
But could it these days be considered ‘cool’
to blog your mind’s growth, just in the hope
of someone logging on to hear your brain?

Greening, J. (2005). "To Wordsworth. On the bicentenary of the completion of The Prelude." Critical Quarterly 47(4): 93-93.

2006-03-08T23:14:00.000Z

note to self:
Registered with irishblogs.info yesterday (or maybe it was the day before). Anyway looking at the site tonight - I'm rated no 112 - how mad is that? Something very wrong there.....need to check out exactly how the ratings are generated - maybe its because site is reset at 8:30 each Wednesday and lots of sites are equal at zero - those of you who have been doing this for a while will be horrified at this 'nOOb' not knowing what shes talking about - reckon no one except meself is looking at this blog and even I am bored......busy day in work today so didn't get chance to do much except catch up on some blogs via my rss feed on bloglines......

Off tomorrow so hope to dedicate some time to work on my literature review - need to sort the articles I already have and more scouring through online journals for some more material.

Geez....as I type I've jumped up to no 68 :-) - should enjoy what will no-doubt be a short-lived stay.....

2006-03-06T23:45:00.000Z

Didn't get much done today - messing around with RSS feeds and hit counters. Also registered with irishblogs.info but when I put the generated html code in my template the irishblogs grapic didn't show up as I expected. Will sort it out tomorrow........although I'm not sure I want these insignificant notes to myself appearing in the RSS feeds of the latest blog entries available on the planet

Can see I will have difficulties coming up with titles for my posts, so I probably won't bother most of the time......how lazy is that

Research on Irish Blogosphere

2006-03-05T11:18:00.000Z

While there is ongoing research into the phenomenon that is blogging much of it is US based which arguably limits the generizability of findings. I could be wrong but research on blogging in Ireland seems to be practically nonexistent. A postgraduate student at WIT is undertaking research with the institute's e-learning group on Weblogs as Learning Tools and has some interesting links here. Does anyone else know of any other? - either research on blogging in Ireland or research being down by anyone in Ireland about blogging in general?

Increasingly Irish newspapers are publishing articles in their business and technology sections which deal with blogging. However my first impressions would be that members of the Irish Blogosphere feel many of these are ill-informed - see Lots of Blogs but few talking about Irish matters and more recently Business Post talks business blogging - not one Irish Blog mentioned. Then again it could be argued there's no such thing as bad publicity - better a bad article than no article at all?

The Irish Blog Awards which have been billed as the “inaugural celebration of

Ireland

’s online blogging community” are due to be held this month in Dublin. Perhaps the PR surrounding the awards may help to propel blog sites into public consciousness in a more positive way?.

2006-03-04T21:25:00.000Z

This is my first blog. Well really it’s my first public blog - have set up a couple of blogs in the past while just to play around with the various tools etc. Have been a ‘lurker’ in the blogosphere for a while, find it fascinating and am now venturing into researching the Irish Blogosphere for a dissertation as part fulfillment of the requirements of an MsC in Internet Systems. Go easy on me - I am only putting my toe in the water!