MetaFilter posts tagged with blogosphere

Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere.

chunking express — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:42:41 -0800

Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. From the abstract:

We used computational social network mapping in combination with human and automated content analysis to analyze the Iranian blogosphere. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that Iranian bloggers are mainly young democrats critical of the regime, we found a wide range of opinions representing religious conservative points of view as well as secular and reform-minded ones, and topics ranging from politics and human rights to poetry, religion, and pop culture. Our research indicates that the Persian blogosphere is indeed a large discussion space of approximately 60,000 routinely updated blogs featuring a rich and varied mix of bloggers. Social network analysis reveals the Iranian blogosphere to be dominated by four major network formations, or poles, with identifiable sub-clusters of bloggers within those poles. We label the poles as 1) Secular/Reformist, 2) Conservative/Religious, 3) Persian Poetry and Literature, and 4) Mixed Networks.

Proving the old adage about opinions

Horace Rumpole — Mon, 21 May 2007 08:57:58 -0800

"Not everybody's a critic." Richard Schickel bitchslaps the blogosphere (in response to this) and not for the first time. The blogosphere slaps back. (via)

Death Threats in the Blogosphere

zabuni — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:01:17 -0800

"I've been getting death threat comments on this blog." Kathy Sierra, of the Creating Passionate Users blog, has currently canceled a talk at the ETech conference because of death threats on (and off) her blog. Scoble's mad, and so is everyone else. But isn't this what happens when we bring anonymity to the Internet?

Paglia, all y'all

staggernation — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:41:44 -0800

Paglia's back. "I had certainly assumed the Web was surfeited with more than enough material, but evidently many others beside myself find the partisan polarization of the blogosphere numbingly predictable and its prose too often slapdash, fragmentary or drearily prolix." If you like that sentence, you'll love the return of Camille Paglia to Salon.com.

30 blogs in Spanish to follow in 2007

jlori — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 07:36:01 -0800

30 blogs a seguir en 2007 A selection of original and creative blogs in Spanish besides rankings and A-lists.

John McCain Wants To Regulate Blogs

ericb — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 07:42:15 -0800

Senator John McCain (R. - AZ) has introduced legislation [PDF] that would hold blogs responsible for all activity in their comments sections and user profiles. Provisions of the proposed bill include: (1) commercial websites and personal blogs "would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000," (2) bloggers with comment sections may face "even stiffer penalties" than ISPs, and (3) any social-networking site must take "effective measures" to remove any Web page that's "associated" with a sex offender. "Because 'social-networking site' isn't defined, it could encompass far more than just MySpace.com, Friendster and similar sites." The list could include any site that allows comments, authot and personal profiles. Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that this proposal may be based more "on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts." "McCain’s legislation could deal a serious blow to the blogosphere. Lacking resources to police their sites, many individual blogs may have to shut down open discussion."^*

New on the Web: Politics As Usual ?

ericb — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 17:39:30 -0800

Remember when folks were "up-in-arms" after learning that the Bush administration paid prominent political commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote 'No Child Left Behind' legislation? It turns out that a handful of liberal bloggers pulled in some decent cash this past year from various political campaigns as consultants, while maintaining their "independent" blogs. Case in point: Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) made $115,000+ from Sherrod Brown (over 15 months) and $65,000 from Mark Warner (over 12 months). Turns out Armstrong admitted this week that he has been writing on his blog under various aliases -- including 'Scott Shields.' 'Shields' received payments from the Robert Menendez campaign.

"Yeah, you heard me, child arsonist. He burns kids"

runkelfinker — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 03:20:31 -0800

Clell Tickle: Indie Marketing Guru (YouTube)

the blogosphere is for sale

bliss322 — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:05:13 -0800

Polluting the blogosphere businessweek is writing about a new company that is basically paying bloggers to write about products --- disclosure is optional... congratulations marketers --- you ruin everything

"Thinking Outside the Blog"

bardic — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:22:46 -0800

"This is the kind of idea no politician could put forward now." In light of the recent Yearly KOS liberal blogger gathering, "old media" columnist David Broder surveys the potential emergence of a new generation of liberal blogs that strive to be taken seriously as promoters of actual domestic and foreign policy, including Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and The Democratic Strategist. Broder highlights a piece by Duke law professor (and anti-ironist wunderkind) Jedediah Purdy on "The New Biopolitics" (which suggests that first-world nations today should invest more into third-world economies, with the understanding that those third-world economies will later help pay the booming pensions and medical costs of first-world workers). Will liberal "ranty" blogs give way to more sober online journals of this sort? Or is it just more insider wonkery by another name? Was Woody Allen correct when he imagined what the merger of commentary and dissent would lead to, or can we look forward to a heightening of political discourse in the near future?