What do you think this image means?
Yesterday, at Fem2pt0, I got to listen to Stanislaus Magniant from Linkfluence describe precisely what that image, and numerous network maps that can be derived from the information that created that image, means – by itself, in relation to the progressive blogosphere, the conservative blogosphere, the entire political blogosphere and conversation around specific issues like the family planning component that was dropped from the house stimulus bill.
The text of Magniant comments are not yet available online or in written format and if they become available, I will update this post. But in the meantime, here are some pieces of information he offered about what he found after being asked to do this work by the organizers of Fem2pt0, courtesy of Twitter tweets by attendees (they are in reverse chrono order of how the presentation was given):
sairy: Stan says even though @huffingtonpost is run by a woman, there’s not enough content by women, so we need more women there.
Jillfoster: Linkfluence underscores the larger your network, the larger your influence on web 2.0
jenmyronuk: Looking at data representation of issues on the political map — volume of discussions between liberal + conservative.
NPerpetuite: Stan Magniant from linkfluence “has mapped” the feminist blogosphere. http://twitpic.com/1asi6 [great photo of Magniant and the large projected network map]
sairy: Reproductive rights in terms of discussion on the feminist blogosphere – much larger of an issue – but often conservatives are louder
csamuels: Feminist blogers still tier 2 or 3 though tight community
nerdette: But the analysis in the visualization we’re looking at shows the feminist blogs are not closely linked to the Conservative blogs
nerdette: Linkage analysis – women/fem blogs are not ghettoized in the blogosphere – Prog blogs link to us, we link back
nerdette: Linkfluence: Feminist blogosphere is closest to the Progressive b’sphere (shocker! 🙂
sairy: “feminist web… very close to the progressive community” when data mashed up with political blogosphere
csamuels: Stanislaus Magniant maps the social web of Feminism/Fem 2.0. “A dense and connected, vibrant and reactive community.”
Stan offered up more specific information today regarding how a site fell into their radar for this particular project, including this:
As briefly mentioned during the introduction, it is not easy to pinpoint a “feminist site”. There’s no technical criteria that says “this is a feminist site” (and even in real life, the exact definition of “feminist” is not always clear-cut). We basically used a triple filter:
1-using the good list of sites, blogs and organizations linking to and associated with the fem2pt0 conference, we used a “crawler” program to identify sites in the immediate vicinity ie. in direct connections with this core set of sites.
2- second filter was based on semantic criteria to detect “telltale” expressions in sites’ content (several dozens) related to a number of top-level feminist issues (such as economic equality, reproductive rights, women in politics, home/life balance, etc.)
3- last but not least, specialized web analysts validated/corrected the data prior to inclusion in final data set.
You can also find more information about our methodology and approach at http://linkfluence.net/?p=company#title2
You can see a list of the top 30 feminist blogs, according to this research, after the jump. If you aren’t sure what the sites are, just ask in the comments and I’ll give you more info based on my experience with pretty much all if not most of these blogs and bloggers.
More about the conference itself tomorrow, but for those who can’t wait, you can read this excellent liveblog of the opening plenary with Eleanor Smeal, Kim Gandy and other luminaries in womens’ rights activism for more than five decades.
http://www.feministing.com/
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/
http://www.feministe.us/blog/
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/
http://www.now.org/
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
http://community.livejournal.com/
http://www.womensenews.org/
http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/
http://www.msmagazine.com/
http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/
http://www.feminist.org/
http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/
http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/
http://www.thecurvature.com/
http://www.guttmacher.org/
http://www.thefword.org.uk/
http://viv.id.au/blog/
http://www.womanist-musings.com/
http://www.blogher.org/
http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/
http://www.ppaction.org/
http://renegadeevolution.blogspot.com/
http://www.naral.org/
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/
http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/
http://abyss2hope.blogspot.com/