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2009by Jon GarfunkelIn the official online forum of the Obama transition team, tens of thousands of Americans petitioned for a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's support for torture. Was this democracy in action? Or would it only be if the President were to follow through on it? We examine this here.
The Launch
Six quotes set the stage: 2008by Jon GarfunkelNow that a federal judge has cleared Wikileaks.org to have its domain restored, it perhaps might behoove the free information zealots to actually look into the substance of the story which instigated the takedown. Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss bank, has a Cayman Island subidiary apparently serving as a tax shelter for the rich: Perhaps top reporters are working on it? 2007by Jon GarfunkelIn recent months, there has been a heightened awareness about privacy risks online. Facebook's Beacon program, which had pulled in information from users' online purchases on from partner sites, was roundly criticized before the company backtracked. by Jon GarfunkelTIME Magazine publishes an article regarding important legislation before the the United States Congress. The article is based on some flimsy research, and netizens immediately pounce on it. The article's author addresses his critics online, and the magazine publishes a correction, sort of. Online media critics, particularly at Wired magazine, are unsatisfied. by Jon GarfunkelIn the previous section, we suggested that the Times, or any other newspaper, could well offer a premium service which allowed for perks like ad-free viewing and unmoderated discussion posts. Charging for content, on the other hand, has the effect of reducing the visibility to new audiences. by Jon GarfunkelIn part 1, found that the number of blog references to the Top 7 Times columnists had likely dropped by 20% against their pundit peers. That's not a bad number considering, that new data from compete.com shows that Op-Ed readership a month ago (before TimesSelect ended) was 45% of what it is today. by Jon GarfunkelThe previous graph leads us to wonder whether we are viewing a power law. A system exhibiting the power law is where power law is one where each node grows in proportion to its current size: thus, the rich get richer. That is, if twice as many people blog about David Brooks than Bob Herbert, we'd expect Brooks's readership to grow twice as fast. And, in fact, that did happen. But it didn't happen across the board. The top 10 of 50 only had 56% of the mentions of the total list in the first period (ending 2003); this number had fallen to 47% by this year. by Jon GarfunkelThe following numbers list references to the writer's name in the blog posts. Certain columnists are commonly known by a nickname (Tom, Bill, Nick, Josh), and thus I queried both results and added them together. It is possible these include overlapping pages. In one case (George Will), I had to estimate the number of references to the columnist and not to the coincidental use of his name in a completely different context: from looking at the last 50 blog posts, 20% were constructions where “will” was used as a verb. (USA Today: "Boy George Will Be Picking Up Street Trash.") by Jon GarfunkelThree weeks ago, Jeff Jarvis wrote on his blog: "TimesSelect cost the paper much more in the internet age: It took the Times columnists out of the conversation and reduced their influence in America and worldwide." This sentiment was echoed by many and challenged by few. We'd like to look at the data, but first we must understand the terms. by Jon Garfunkel
This chart visually illustrates the number of mentions from blogs to columnists in the previously-defined "punditsphere" in each of the last four years up until September 17, 2007 (see the source data). Each year is illustrated by a different color:
by Jon GarfunkelContinuing our analysis, we want to get a better measure of the annual growth. The first column takes the blog popularity from the 12 months ending 9/17/2005, and compares it to the prior 12-month period. As noted before, we are using the odd cutoff date of 9/17 to roughly correspond to the TimesSelect period (see data). by Jon GarfunkelWhat happened to the audience during the two years of TimesSelect? Google reports that there were 4.8 million references to "New York Times" in the blogs over the two years. If we assume that these posts generally referenced one of the 350,000 published articles over the two years (at least, to the same degree that a reference of "Frank Rich" referenced a particular column-- a BlogPulse trend graph tends to confirm a weekly spike for a weekly column), then we conclude that the averages references per article is 14. One can infer that the columns, at least to the opinionators in the blogosphere, are ten times as popular. Still, the 177,169 references only represented 3% of the blog buzz to the Times. Suppose we double this to account for the TimesSelect columnists in the Other sections, and then apply our 20% loss, we then conclude that the perceived audience drop for nytimes.com as a whole was 1-2%. by Jon GarfunkelThere are three common resources to measure "buzz" through historical mentions of names/phrases on blogs. This article compares the data available for each from common search terms.
by Jon GarfunkelOur interest is the influence of the New York Times columnists. Let us propose that they inhabit not just the blogosphere, but the punditsphere, comprising the top political columnists of the day. The blogosphere at large links to the much smaller punditsphere with much more concentration than the other way around. Combined, the pundits receive a fraction of the total references or links on any given day, but because the pundits individually get the most links, people pay them the most attention. It is within the punditsphere that the Times columnists compete especially for attention. by Jon GarfunkelEvery cable network has a contract with cable carriers, not viewers, and thus it caught little attention outside the trade press that last October, Fox renewed its contract with Cablevision, the nation's fifth* largest cable system, tripling its carriage fee from 25 cents a month per subscriber to 75 cents. by Jon GarfunkelIn my research at Civilities, I've come across several cases -- three in the last many months-- which inform the development of PONAR (Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting). Each involved an aggrieved party (in some cases, still mostly anonymous) who was harassed by anonymous aggravators online. In all cases I have been able to contact at least one of the parties, in order to understand the case better. by Jon GarfunkelWhen I wrote the action plan for Comment Management Responsibility (“CommResp”) in April, I had hoped to test it against additional online communties. Oddly, I hadn't been aware about the brewing storm that month concerning the AutoAdmit law student discussion board and its rampant misogyny. by Jon GarfunkelWould the MeanKids/Kathy Sierra saga have unfolded differently under CommResp? That's a tricky question. Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm just reading about the whole genesis of the problem now.
by Jon GarfunkelThe difficulties of comment management have been known for some time. What follows is a brief history [though I may update it later.] Esther Dyson, in her popular-selling book Release 2.0 about the emerging Internet a decade ago (predating the current trend of "2.0" marketing) considered anonymous communities online. Whereas ad hoc Internet communities seemed to thrive with anonymity, the most influential online community of all-- the San Francisco-based WELL-- was nurtured by the philosophy that all identities were to be known, and participants were encouraged to meet each other in real life. Founder Stewart Brand felt very strongly in the philosophy of You Own Your Own Words -- that each person would have to post with their real identity. In fact, as Dyson recalled, a WELL experiment into anonymity proved disastrous. We can probably conclude that the natural evolution of communities is to go from anonymity to familiarity, and not the other around. by Jon GarfunkelSeveral months ago, I decided on a simple experiment: I'd stop reading most blogs I'd been reading, and just get news from my regular sources, and see if I'd be any less informed. I think I've stayed sharp. In this three-thousand exercise, I looked to see whether I missed anything in the U.S. 2006by Jon GarfunkelAt the start of this series, I mentioned the “pinball nature of news” in expressing how I heard about Alaa. Of course, it's not really random when we walk through the connections. Here they are: by Jon GarfunkelEthan Zuckerman, founder of the Global Voices project and longtime blogger on Africa and development issues, had considered the use of Google AdWords for awareness campaigns in a post some 18 months ago. Several aid NGOs have been buying AdWords-- ads that would show up based on a given search term-- for different countries, so he wondered what it would really cost to enter this market. By getting involved with the campaign for Alaa through this series (see previous part), I set myself to find out. by Jon GarfunkelToday, a typical publisher demonstrates their RSS savvy by the amount of flavors they support, including RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom-- not by the depth of richness of metadata that comes with the feed. None offer support for categorization, threading, discussions through RSS. Blog posts represented in RSS feeds remained really simple. And that was Winer's vision. Most of the personal publishing that reached millions on the web derived from his style of weblogging (the pure journaling/diary-writing developed independently later, according to chronicler Rebecca Blood). by Jon GarfunkelIn March 1999, Dan Libby of Netscape introduced RSS as alternative way of bringing content to users; it stood RDF Site Summary or subsequently, Rich Site Summary. Just how “rich” it would be-- how much structure through the RDF Resource Data Framework to employ-- was open to discussion. The basic premise of syndication was to deconstruct web content content into its logical components: headline, title, publication time, author, content, in order to be re-assembled by the user. It was a bit of a fluke for its time: websites were trying to be ever more flashy and interactive, and RSS undermined that experience somewhat. 2005by Jon GarfunkelIn researching Maynard's Radio Needs a Boost, I wondered how community journalism stacked up against traditional journalism in reporting and amplifying. If community journalism missing clear and present stories like this one, and is content in its own static, than it has a long ways to go. by Jon GarfunkelThat the Supreme Court of Delaware affirmed the right of anonymous free speech shouldn't be news. That they affirmed the precedent that there is a tradeoff between anonymity and credibility-- this should be news to people quick to celebrate this decision. by Jon GarfunkelThis piece brings the New Gatekeepers series to a close. I sketched out a future vision in the previous part, which I believe could happen, sometime. In the meanwhile, I will write about the future as it has happened over the past four months.
by Jon GarfunkelBefore I get to the solutions, I'll spend some time summarizing what has been discussed in The New Gatekeepers series, this being part 6.
People around the world have discovered their voices, and enjoy
seeing their work published online for others to read. The tools they use are quite often blogs, and thus they call themselves bloggers. And by the bubble of blogging, the format been hyped as a panacea for solving the problems of the media, of business, or organizations. It just doesn't follow.
by Jon GarfunkelFifth in the series on The New Gatekeepers.It's been over two weeks since the that last part of this series. This gap in time can be partly rationalized by my hoping to build up some anticipation for this next part. We're going to look at epidemics, cascades and the problem of crowds. by Jon GarfunkelFourth in the series on The New Gatekeepers.
A wonderful set of coincidences happened this weekend; I decided to take a break from writing, and then a beautiful woman flew into town and we happened to met, and we decided to go out Saturday night. Pretty quickly I had to find something to go see and a restaurant to dine in. Your dividend from all of this, dear reader, is an illustration about the different circumstances where gatekeepers are necessary or not: from theater shows to dining options.
by Jon GarfunkelThird in the series on The New Gatekeepers. There are a number of values associated with, and celebrated in, the blogosphere: Freedom. Anonymity. Immediacy. Talking. Breadth. Ego. Involvement. Serendipity. But we may view them in different light when we consider what values they displace: by Jon Garfunkel...where I learned just who the new gatekeepers were, and why people are suspicious of their roles.
Second in the series on The New Gatekeepers.
by Jon GarfunkelA stark look at the challenge of the old gatekeepers-- and the possible emergence of new ones.
First in a series on The New Gatekeepers.
by Jon GarfunkelIf you want to know something about social media, blogs, etc. these are the people you might look towards and this is the information you may be able to collect. I have consolidated the data in this chart. Unfortunately, it tells you nothing at all -- nothing about the particular expertise of each person in producing good information or interpreting it.
by Jon GarfunkelWhy it took over two years of conversations to get to this point; Why it's important; What can be done; Where we should go from here. by Jon Garfunkel"Jeff Gannon" was originally outed as a conservative operative in the White House press room one year ago. Why did the story take so long to break?
by Jon GarfunkelThere have been a few summaries about the Blogging, Journalism and Credibility Conference, co-sponsored by the Berkman Center and Shorenstein Center at Harvard, along with the American Library Association. Most of them focused on what the insiders have said-- NYU Professor and conference presenter Jay Rosen even titled his summary " Big Wigs Confer." I thought I'd take a separate angle, and look at what some of the little people said. This includes the little voices around the big table; the voices of the observers in the room, and even people on the Internet-- bloggers and others who care about the future of ideas-- who felt excluded from the conversaion in the first place. And I thought I'd do this using the framework of inclusiveness.
by Jon GarfunkelTHIS IS A DRAFT. Posting this in the hope that someone else can do it
better-- like someone who researches for a living. The goal here is to try and determine "leading indicators" of online
political writers, and find out who we should be reading more, and trying to
avoid the trap of the"power law", (see Shirky) which holds that people read the
writers largely because other people read them.
by Jon GarfunkelFor Theories of the Bulge, I needed to come up with a timeline of when theories were developed. I researched through the core websites, and had a look at a few more that were linked. Afterwards, I gave this a bit of structure by splitting it up into weeks. And then I thought, what else was going on in the news that week? This was quite a busy month-- and it didn't help that four debates were cramed into the first half of it. If the debates were spached out by a week or two over a longer period of time, it perhaps would have allowed the country to spend more time on the issues covered-- as well as the meta-issues like this. by Jon Garfunkel In the realm of online political commentary, there are blogs, and there are things which resemble or are thought to be blogs. It's vital to know what's what-- not to castigate some as being on one side of the divide, but simply to help researchers and practitioners understand, what salient features they are referring to when they talk about "blogs." A closer analysis is needed to understand which characteristics-- including those that are inherent with the setup of the software, as well as those that are emergent-- should be explored or employed for a particular situation.
2004by Jon GarfunkelI took a brief trip to the mid-nineties last weekend, going to my tenth high school reunion, leafing through some old Wired magazines, and picking up Thomas Frank's 2000 book One Market Under God. A common theme: how did I view the "elites" then and now? Frank hypothesis, which he expanded in one of this year's most informative political books, What's the Matter With Kansas?, has been that American political discourse continues to be defined by a demonization of the elites. This is not very much different from high school, as it turns out. Who the elites are, who gains by painting them as such, and whether they're the same as the "mainstream" are questions we should consider-- whenever we encounter someone raging against the media. Here's a little exercise, weighing in at four thousand words. by Jon GarfunkelA look at the visual growth of weblogs. by Jon GarfunkelWeb pages should fix their width to a size that the reader is used to; in printed publications, this is usually between 60 and 75 characters. Here we compare the paragraph widths of some popular media websites.
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