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Workshop in Advanced Techniques for Political Communication Research: Web Content Analysis Session Professor Rachel Gibson, University of Manchester
Web 1.0 The read only web Web 2.0 What is Web 2.0 Tim OReilly (2005) The read/write web
Web 2.0
Technological definition
Web as platform, supplanting desktop pc Inter-operability , through browser access a wide range of programmes that fulfil a variety of online tasks i.e. manage a home page, communicate with friends, share/publish pictures, receive news.
Social understanding
Web 2.0 is based around social networking activities relies on and built through social or participatory software. Users create, distribute, value-add to online content through blogs, facebook profiles, online video, wikis, tagging tools. Produsers Bruns (2007) or Prosumers distinction between producers and users/consumers of content disappears. Hallmark of these applications is the way in which they devolve creative and classificatory power to ordinary users.
Quantitative semi-automated semi1. Web 1.0 static/fixed homepages - Parties and campaigns sites Gibson and Ward (2000; 2002) Foot & Schneider (2002) - E-government field see Baker (2009) Pina et al. (2009) Panopoulou et al (2008) West (2007) Henriksson et a. (2006) Holzer and Kim (2005); Garcia et al (2005) http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovt06us.pdf 2. Web 1.5? - Updated web 1.0 schemes to incorporate web 2.0 elements. Party and Campaign home pages - Gulati & Wiliams, 2006; Foot and Schneider 2006 NSM - Stein, 2009 3. Action Centers - MyBO, Membersnet, MyConservatives, LibDemACT (Gibson, 2010; Lilleker and Jackson, 2010)
Hyperlink analysis
More sophisticated/automated methods have developed for academic research since around 2003.
Adaptations of search engine technology most simple form of online link analysis. Hindman et al. (2003) Googlearchy pioneered the term googlearchy referred to a power law .operating in regard to the prominence of sites. Adamic and Glance (2005) examined linkage between left and right-wing blogs in the U.S. http://www.blogpulse.com/papers/2005/AdamicGlanceBlogWWW.pdf Ackland and Gibson (2007) comparative analysis of political party systems linkage using VOSON http://anu.voson.edu.au crawler to examine the out and inbound linkages among political parties in 6 different democracies. Hyperlinks = networked communication inclusivity, identity, opponent dismissal, force multiplication. Test via nos to links to other parties, target of links by tld, inter-linkage within party groups. For tools see http://www.issuecrawler.net ; http://www.touchgraph.com http://socscibot.wlv.ac.uk/
Beyond websites?
Blog analysis key studies
Types, Content, Structure Sweetster-Trammel, Kaye D. 2007. Candidate campaign Blogs: Directly Reaching Out to the Youth Vote. The American Behavioral Scientist. 50(9): 1255-1264. Xifra, J. and A. Huerta2008. s Blogging PR: An Exploratory Analysis of Public Relations Public Relations Review 34:265-275. Herring, S. et al. Weblogs as a bridging genre Information Technology and People 18(2): 2005: 142-171. Influence Karpf, D. 2008. Measuring Influence in the Political Blogosphere Institute Politics and Technology Review, Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. :33-41 http://www.the4dgroup.com/BAI/articles/PoliTechArticle.pdf Etling, B. et al. 2010. Mapping the Arabic blogosphere: politics and dissent online 12: 1225-1243. Elmer, G.; Ryan, P.M.; Devereaux, Z.; Langlois, G.; Redden, J. and McKelvey, F. 2007. Election Bloggers: Methods for Determining Political Influence. First Monday 12(4). Drezner and Farrell. 2008. The Power and Politics of Blogs Public Choice (134): 15-30
Beyond websites?
Twitter analysis Boyd, D. et al. 2010 Tweet Tweet Retweet Working paper. http://www.danah.org/papers/TweetTweetRetweet.pdf Tumasjan et al. 2010. Predicting Elections with Twitter Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Social Science Computer Review http://ssc.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/09/24/089443931038655 7.full.pdf+html Zuckerman, E. Studying Twitter and the Moldovan Protests www.Ethanzuckermann.com/blog/
Beyond websites?
YouTube analysis
Shah, C. 2010. Supporting Research Data Collection from YouTube with Tubekit Journal of Information Technology & Politics 7(2&3): 226-240 Wallsten, K. 2010. Yes We Can: How Online Viewership, Blog Discussion, Campaign Statement, and Mainstream Media Coverage Produced by a Viral Video Phenomenon. Journal of Information Technology & Politics 7(2&3): 163-181 Zink, M. Suh, K and J. Kurose. 2009. Characteristic of YouTube network traffic at a campus network, Computer Networks 53: 501-514 Tian, Y. 2010. Organ Donation on Web 2.0: Content and Audience Analysis of Organ Donation Videos on YouTube Health Communication 25: 238-246.
Online resources and tools for collection and analysing web 2.0 content.
Digital Tool Kits
Digital Methods Initiative - https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase Richard Rodgers,
Natively Digital: The Link | The URL | The Tag | The Domain | The PageRank | The Robots.txt Device Centric: Google | Google Images | Google News | Google Blog Search | Yahoo | YouTube | Del.icio.us | Technorati | Wikipedia | Alexa | IssueCrawler | Twitter | Facebook
Infoscape Research Lab Tools www.infoscapelab.ca Greg Elmer - Blog Aggregator measures activity levels over time and hyperlinks cited in blog posts
- YouTube & Twitter scraper title, tags, links, date uploaded, author info, views per week - Facebook Group scraper - title, type, number and members of group
Training / Research
Exploring Online Research Methods Website: http://www.geog.le.ac.uk/ORM/site/home.htm Digital Methods Initiative Training Course https://www.digitalmethods.net/Digitalmethods/WebHome http://nms.sagepub.com/ http://jcmc.indiana.edu/ http://www.connectedaction.net/ http://www.methodspace.com/group/sageresearchmethodsonline
Concluding comments
There are a growing number of options open to researchers seeking to capture and analyze campaigns and their influence on voters. Approaches have evolved as Web itself has. From adaptation traditional methods suitable to analysis of static point to mass old media to newer web specific tools that allow for capture and analysis of more dynamic many to many medium. Network analysis tools increasingly used reflecting a shift in the understanding and practice of the Web as a dynamic social context - conversational - rather than a fixed infrastructure. The notion of content itself has changed fundamentally - user-generated rather than editor controlled (although MSM still dominant in news). This has some significant implications for content analysis:
1. Linkage of the context to the content. To interpret meaning of web content twitter feed, facebook profiles, locate it in the wider and ongoing stream of dialogue. 2. . Locating content inter-operability of the various platforms means that content is shared across multiple sites. So need to follow the content. 3. Volume of content increases - capturing and archiving issues 4. Quality of content changes . A new language or terminology emerging content = actions. Posts, embeds, widgets, tweets, email, views, followers, befriending or liking a politician/party . A new software language has grown up - @, #, RT, http. Automating/manual coding.