Simple self promotion.

Apologies for joining this conversation late, I teach 6-9pm on Tuesdays so I don’t get around to blogging until late in the day.

I’ll try to answer all of the questions that haven’t been addressed yet, but please remind me if I miss anything. [Three-hour classes are draining and I’m not at the top of my game afterwards.]

And are libertarian blogs counted as ‘left’ or ‘right’? For example, if CT links to a Radley Balko piece on police swat team raids, is that an example of left->left, left->right or is it excluded?

Thanks to Dylan for addressing this. As he noted, we excluded libertarian blogs precisely so as not to run into this classification problem. As you know, this led to excluding some very popular political blogs that would have been ideal to include, but after considering the various options, we decided this was the best method for this piece.

Aren’t ‘well known blogs’ going to be ‘far from insulated’ by definition.

Insulated was measured as engagement with other blogs from the same ideological perspective without a similar engagement with ones of opposing views. So no, I don’t think that’s in the definition. We were interested in widely-read political blogs, because we figured those were the ones with more potential to influence conversations. (If you want to suggest insulation by definition then I’d say a blog that nobody reads and thus to which nobody links would be such a blog by definition.)

am I correct in inferring that all the blogs in the sample were American?

Neither being based in the US or being an American author was a criterion for being included. Rather, what was of concern was whether the content on the blog addressed the US political system. This doesn’t really address what was of interest to you here, but I thought I’d clarify.

did the study note whether particular blogs had a style of linking?

No, I’m afraid we did not look at this. It could be an interesting way to pursue this work.

anything else you’d like to add? [I made that up:)]

I don’t have room for such a project right now, but it would be interesting to replicate this study this year, an election cycle later, and see how things may or may not have changed.

Also, one of my students noted in a class discussion recently that it would be interesting to replicate the study at a time that is not close to a major election. He suggested that there may be more interlinking at such times. This could be worth testing.

A note on authorship. The second author on the piece is Jason Gallo who is a graduate student in our Media, Technology and Society program. Matthew Kane is an undergraduate alum of Northwestern (was a student when we worked on this paper).

Finally, if you’d like to read the paper, send me an email (see my Web site for contact info).

Also a question: did the study note whether particular blogs had a style of linking? In reading, it strikes me that some folks do a lot of linking just to point out the enemy, while others really go for real debate. If there’s a lot of variance there, you could still end up looking at only blogs that insulated you from opposing viewpoints (though that wouldn’t be the fault of blogs, merely your taste in blogs).

That’s not actually true. See, for example:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=121106B

It’s arguably different for newspapers or public airwaves because they’re costly and limited resources – so they should stick to news business (they don’t, of course). But blogs are conversations or soapboxes. Half the time on topic sounds pretty high. If one wants to make a fetish out of always being productive, one should go off to a business school and leave life to the living.

So if you’d like greater access to the articles in the issue you edited, you may want to contact your authors and encourage them to post their articles in their local repositories or websites.

Henry – since this post is entitled “Blogs and partisanship in the US”, am I correct in inferring that all the blogs in the sample were American?

Personally, I’d be interested in how many American political blogs linked to non-American political blogs – and how many non-American political blogs linked back. Even compensating for America’s immense population, I suspect there’d be a lot more of the latter than the former.

I go to one site and from time to time post comments that are deemed inappropriate—because I present an oppising view. I had been called a ” troll,” but now I am shut ut from the site (ISP blocked).

Thus when Obama tells us we are one nation etc I laugh. We are not. have never been except during a major war etc. We are Blue or Red etc

Libertarians? sure.But when they vote, they vote conservative, always, but the label convinces them they are above party allegiance and taking the high road.