| Blog
popularity
Recently, researchers have analyzed the dynamics
of how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures
of this: popularity through citations, as well as popularity
through affiliation (i.e. blogroll). The basic conclusion
from studies of the structure of blogs is that while it takes
time for a blog to become popular through blogrolls, permalinks
can boost popularity more quickly, and are perhaps more indicative
of popularity and authority than blogrolls, since they denote
that people are actually reading the blog's content and deem
it valuable or noteworthy in specific cases.
The blogdex project was launched
by researchers in the MIT Media Lab to crawl the web and gather
data from thousands of blogs in order to investigate their
social properties. It gathered this information for over 4
years, and autonomously tracked the most contagious information
spreading in the blog community. The project is no longer
active.
Blogging and the mass
media
Many bloggers differentiate themselves from the mainstream
media, while others are members of that media working through
a different channel. Some institutions see blogging as a means
of "getting around the filter" and pushing messages
directly to the public. Some critics worry that bloggers respect
neither copyright nor the role of the mass media in presenting
society with credible news. Bloggers and other contributors
to user generated content are behind TIME magazine naming
the 2006 person of the year as "you".
Legal issues
The emergence of blogging
has brought a range of legal liabilities. Employers have "dooced"
(fired) employees who maintain personal blogs that discuss
their employers. The major areas of concern are the issues
of proprietary or confidential information, and defamation.
Several cases have been brought before the national courts
against bloggers and the courts have returned with mixed verdicts.
In John Doe v. Patrick Cahill, the Delaware Supreme Court
held that stringent standards had to be met to unmask anonymous
bloggers, and also took the unusual step of dismissing the
libel case itself rather than referring it back to the trial
court for reconsideration. In a bizarre twist, the Cahills
were able to find the ISP address of John Doe, who turned
out to be the person they suspected: the town's mayor, Councilman
Cahill's political rival. The Cahills amended their original
complaint, and the mayor settled the case rather than going
to trial. |
