AR; Agenda setting revisited

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A fresh article by Sharon Meraz studies the agenda-setting power of “elite traditional media” (more specifically, the New York Times and the Washington Post) on the blogosphere, through various issues, and distinguishing between right-leaning, moderate and left-leaning independent blogs.

The results confirm what my own tentative research about social news sites hinted at: that traditional media are still very important, an “A-list force” in setting the agenda of citizen media; but the former no longer hold a monopoly over agenda setting.

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QMSS workshop, Amsterdam

I had the chance to participate at the ESF-sponsored “Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences – 2” workshop in Amsterdam, on the 18th and 19th of December. Simply put, it was great.

Seeing that I’m quite a newcomer to the field of social network analysis, I learned plenty of new things. Getting acquainted with SNA in the first place had been an eye opener – it might just provide the key to the second phase of my research – the structural analysis of social news webisites, in order to understand whether or not deliberation has anything to do with what gets on the front page.

However, I think it’s also important to consider that social news sites represent one very special kind of social network, with nodes and ties of particular nature, quite unlike their real life counterparts. And – one of the points stressed by many of the speakers at the workshop – the fact that we undertake SNA should not overshadow the importance of content (and its analysis).

Speaking of speakers, I feel obliged to mention the names of Noshir Contractor, Mike Thelwall, Ted Welser, Bernie Hogan, Steven McDermott and Sandra Gonzales-Bailon, whose presentations I found especially interesting – and – well I guess it would be pointless to conceal my self-interest – useful for my own research.

Considerably more experienced

These last months of the year are turning out to be quite busy, even if not much of all the commotion is visible around here.

I made my debut in the world of conferences at the Experience 2008 – which was, indeed, quite an experience. A wide range of topics has been covered – some of them got me lost without the slightest hint of what actually was everything about, but some of them turned out to be quite interesting and – hopefully – useful as well.

Most importantly I’d like to mention the talk of Wim Veen from the Delft University of Technology, titled “Homo Zappiens – learning strategies of a new generation.” I hope to return to this subject – how textual and sequential information processing strategies are replaced by those built on images and non-sequentiality – because it touches upon the problem of interactivity, which has been one of the topics constantly on the agenda in the talks with my supervisor Tarmo Malmberg. (Basically the question is how justified the distinction is between “active” and “passive” media consumption – or in fact just what do these notions actually mean.)

But before that, currently, it is preparation for a methodology workshop that’s keeping me busy. Starting one week from today in Amsterdam, it’s all going to be about methodology – and social network analysis, which might just give me the key to the second phase of my research project.