Schmidt mit Dete

Ich tauche kurz aus der hektischen und arbeitsintensiven Endphase des “Jugendliche und Web 2.0″-Projekts auf, um auf die nächsten beiden Konferenzabstecher von mir hinzuweisen – es geht zu meinen liebsten Frühlingstagungen.

Da ist zunächst mal die re:publica, die kommenden Mittwoch in Berlin beginnt. Das Programm sieht wieder sehr vielfältig und spannend aus; ich bin nicht nur mit einem Vortrag zum neuen Netz am Freitag vormittag beteiligt, sondern habe auch die Ehre, als “Internetdoktor” die Twitterlesung am Donnerstag Abend zu moderieren – sehr schön!

[Update: Steffen Büffel hat mit mir für die Blogpiloten ein kurzes Interview zum re:publica-Motto "Shift Happens" geführt]

Am Sonntag drauf fliege ich dann nach Wien, wo vom 6. bis 8. April die “General Online Research Conference” der DGOF stattfindet. Auch hier enthält das Programm eine ganze Reihe von sehr interessant klingenden Vorträgen; zudem freue ich mich darauf, endlich mal wieder nach Wien zu kommen, wo ich ja Anfang 2005 mal für einige Monate gelebt habe. Mein Vortrag stellt Ergebnisse einer Inhaltsanalyse der Verweise von Blogs auf journalistische Webangebote vor; als Vorgucker hier der abstract von letztem Herbst, die Präsentation selbst folgt dann während der Tagung.

How do Blogs comment on Mainstream Media Content? Results from a link analysis.

Various academic studies focus on the relationship between blogs and mainstream media, analysing if and how blogs compete with or complement the activities of professional journalists. However, it is not yet known how exactly blogs comment on mainstream media content. More specifically, relevant research questions are: In which context do blogs refer to text or videos produced by journalistic outlets? Do they mainly criticize or approve the professionally selected and produced information? Do blogs which themselves have a large audience differ in their reactions from those who are adressing only small publics?

To answer these questions, this paper presents findings from a content analysis of N=1.850 links from blogs to mainstream media content. The link targets include the 20 most linked-to german journalistic sites according to technorati.com (e.g. spiegel.de, bild.t-online.de or heute.de) as well as the five most linked-to geman-speaking blogs (e.g. spreeblick.de or netzpolitik.org) as a control group. For each target, 75 links were randomly drawn from the last 600 links to this site available from technorati.com at the beginning of September 2008. Links were then coded for various characteristics, including the target (specific article, thematic category or main site), the context (e.g. static sidebar link, source for a specific claim or part of a link collection) and the evaluation of the linked-to content (neutral, positive or negative). Also, information about the ‘authority’ of the referring site were collected from technorati.com.

Analysis of the dataset is still under way at this time, but preliminary results point out that…

… a large majority (about 80%) of links from blogs to Mainstream Media is neutral, i.e. without explicit positive or negative connotations.

… among those links expressing an evaluation of the linked-to content, slightly more links are positive than negative.

… the more prominent “A-List”-Blogs have a higher share of negative links than the blogs within the “long tail”.

These preliminary findings, to be complemented by a more thorough analysis for the final paper, give strength to the argument that blogs mostly channel attention towards journalistically produced content, rather than offering directly competing views and perspectives.