[nel mio libro Social Media ROI viene approfondita la tecnica utilizzata]
A social network analysis of the Italian blogosphere aimed to understand bloggers’ relationship and how blogosphere is evolving into a complex information ecosystem.
I started considering the top 500 Italian blogs (BlogBabel ranking – april 2011). For each of them I’ve detected the most frequent outlinks and inlinks. In this way I’ve got 4,189 edges and 1,980 blog nodes analyzed with Gephi. You can search for a blog and navigate the map here or in full page (thanks to Raphaël Velt).
Below you can find the core represented by 139 blogs with the highest in-degree value, in other words the most cited ones. Circles size is proportional to the number of inlinks received. Blue lines represent mutual citations: the strongest relations. [Versione Italiana]
The following map shows relationships based on two metrics: indegree (circles size) and betweeness (red nodes are the ones with the highest betweeness centrality value). Betweeness is a centrality measure: vertices that have a high probability to occur on a randomly chosen shortest path between two randomly chosen nodes have a high betweenness. [Versione Italiana]
The next SNA shows relationships based on two metrics: indegree (circles size) and eigenvector centrality (red nodes are the ones with the highest eigenvector centrality value). Eigenvector centrality is a measure of the importance of a node in a network. It assigns relative scores to all nodes in the network based on the principle that connections to high-scoring nodes contribute more to the score of the node in question than equal connections to low-scoring nodes. [Versione Italiana]
Here’s an analysis of blogs clustered by type. It shows 1,448 personal blogs, 194 blogs that are part of nanopublishing networks (blogo, blogosfere, nanopress, Isayblog!, etc…), 53 “journalists blogs” hosted by news sites (Espresso, la Stampa, il Sole 24 Ore, ecc…), 68 are blogs but legally registered as news sites, 217 are inactives. [Versione Italiana]
The final analysis of the emerging thematic clusters (cooking, politics, science, technology, web communication, web design, mobile, literature, comics). You can also see a specific cluster about Beppe Grillo and IDV party that are very active online. Blogo, Blogosfere, Nanopress, ISayBlog! are nanopublishing networks. [Versione Italiana]
