Sitemap | Contact Us | Login | Register

Publications

Frequently Asked Questions: Public Media

Newsletter

Subscribe to our free mailing list for event announcements, CSM news and our latest reports.

Feeds

Please login or register to post News from the Future of Public Media

Mapping User-Generated Media Part I: Red, Blue and Beyond

email   discuss Posted by Jessica Clark on Apr 30, 2008 at 11:53 AM

This is the latest post in our series featuring maps of the media landscape, which leads up to the June 17 conference, Beyond Broadcast: Mapping Public Media. (Note: Today is the last day to register at the earlybird rate!).

One of the trends we’re examining at the conference is the rise of data visualization tools for examining online media content and networked publics. We began this research in conjunction with the Amsterdam-based Govcom.org Foundation, and have continued to explore other visualization and mapping approaches. The Presidential Watch 08 site provides an example of what has become a common impulse: mapping user-generated media along partisan lines:

I spoke with Anthony Hamelle of Linkfluence, the creators of this visualization. Hamelle will be speaking at Beyond Broadcast, and the company is in the midst of revising Presidential Watch 08 for the general election season. He explained their analysis method:

We worked from sets of progressive and conservative websites found on political portals or through search engines (about 100 at the beginning). From there, we launched our crawlers to expand the communities (20,000 sites as a result). We then worked with our analysts to categorize the websites brought back by our crawlers (with the help of our own categorization algorithm).

The visualization is notable for its interactivity. Clicking on a particular media outlet shows the density of mutual, outgoing and incoming links, revealing online influence, patterns of connection within the different political media spheres, and the role that traditional public media outlets, newspapers, magazines and broadcasters are playing in both amplifying and reporting on user-generated political sites.

In this moment of convergence, categorization can be tricky. Dig deeper into the visualization and you’ll find large commercial broadcasters categorized alongside small print publishers. Determining who is a “blogger” and what constitutes “user-generated” content is complicated—as is identifying the political leanings of particular outlets. While conservatives might dismiss the New York Times as a bastion of “liberal media bias,” progressives vociferously argue that Fox News is tantamount to propaganda. Public and independent outlets—represented in this map as yellow and purple dots, alongside various “Mass media” outlets—often serve as arbiters and interpreters of such partisan jockeying. But the interaction between blue and red media makers itself serves a public media function. Take this example from a speech by Center for Social Media Director Pat Aufderheide:

Consider a traditional role of public media: to serve as a watchdog on power. The blogosphere has acted in this way, transcending at times political partisanship.
An example: Recently in the U.S. two senators, Republican Tom Coburn and Democratic Barak Obama, proposed the creation of a searchable database of all federal government contracts and grants over $25K; a treasure trove for anti-corruption research. Political bloggers of all stripes loved the idea. Then suddenly one Senator put a “secret hold” on the bill, stalling it.
The blogosphere erupted, especially the Republicans and libertarians. Bloggers told people to contact their senators. Every single Senator except the bill authors got called. Bloggers also pooled efforts to flush out the secret-holder, who then lifted his hold. MSM reported on the event. And the bill was passed. And the Office of Management and Budget, which will maintain the database, had a meeting with bloggers to ask for their continued support for efforts to monitor spending.

Visualizations like this one and the work being done by research outfits such as Morningside Analytics, govcom.org and orgnet.com help to illuminate the growing connections between individuals, citizen and professional media makers, and converging distribution platforms. Place-based mapping of user-generated content presents another analytical dimension; more on that in the next post: Mapping User Generated Content Part II.


Discussion

There are no comments on this blog entry yet. Start the discussion below.

Post Your Comments

To post a comment, please login or register for a free account.
 

Tell-a-Friend

I spoke with Anthony Hamelle of Linkfluence, the creators of this visualization. Hamelle will be speaking at Beyond Broadcast, and the company is in the midst of revising Presidential Watch 08 for the general election season. He explained their analysis method:
We worked from sets of progressive and conservative websites found on political portals or through search engines (about 100 at the beginning). From there, we launched our crawlers to expand the communities (20,000 sites as a result). We then worked with our analysts to categorize the websites brought back by our crawlers (with the help of our own categorization algorithm).
The visualization is notable for its interactivity. Clicking on a particular media outlet shows the density of mutual, outgoing and incoming links, revealing online influence, patterns of connection within the different political media spheres, and the role that traditional public media outlets, newspapers, magazines and broadcasters are playing in both amplifying and reporting on user-generated political sites. In this moment of convergence, categorization can be tricky. Dig deeper into the visualization and you'll find large commercial broadcasters categorized alongside small print publishers. Determining who is a "blogger" and what constitutes "user-generated" content is complicated--as is identifying the political leanings of particular outlets. While conservatives might dismiss the New York Times as a bastion of "liberal media bias," progressives vociferously argue that Fox News is tantamount to propaganda. Public and independent outlets—represented in this map as yellow and purple dots, alongside various "Mass media" outlets—often serve as arbiters and interpreters of such partisan jockeying. But the interaction between blue and red media makers itself serves a public media function. Take this example from a speech by Center for Social Media Director Pat Aufderheide:
Consider a traditional role of public media: to serve as a watchdog on power. The blogosphere has acted in this way, transcending at times political partisanship.
An example: Recently in the U.S. two senators, Republican Tom Coburn and Democratic Barak Obama, proposed the creation of a searchable database of all federal government contracts and grants over $25K; a treasure trove for anti-corruption research. Political bloggers of all stripes loved the idea. Then suddenly one Senator put a “secret hold” on the bill, stalling it.
The blogosphere erupted, especially the Republicans and libertarians. Bloggers told people to contact their senators. Every single Senator except the bill authors got called. Bloggers also pooled efforts to flush out the secret-holder, who then lifted his hold. MSM reported on the event. And the bill was passed. And the Office of Management and Budget, which will maintain the database, had a meeting with bloggers to ask for their continued support for efforts to monitor spending. Visualizations like this one and the work being done by research outfits such as Morningside Analytics, govcom.org and orgnet.com help to illuminate the growing connections between individuals, citizen and professional media makers, and converging distribution platforms. Place-based mapping of user-generated content presents another analytical dimension; more on that in the next post: Mapping User Generated Content Part II.

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blogs/beyond_broadcast/1008/ ' />

Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.