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Weblogs for Research(ers)

Dive into the world of weblogs with insights on their definitions, social interactions, and semantic study methodologies. Discover the growing significance of blog communities and text analysis in the realm of digital conversations. Uncover the intersection of technology, communication, and human expression.

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Weblogs for Research(ers)

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  1. Weblogs for Research(ers) Anjo Anjewierden Human Computer Studies laboratory Faculty of Science University of Amsterdam http://anjo.blogs.com Many thanks to Lilia Efimova, Rogier Brussee, Robert de Hoog, Stephanie Hendrick and the blogosphere in general Weblog research

  2. What is a weblog (1)? • Most common descriptive definition: a weblog is • a personal journal, • updated regularly, • published on the internet; and • posts (entries) appear in reverse chronological order Weblog research

  3. What is a weblog (2)? • Weblogs are social as they encourage others to participate using two mechanisms: • Posts have an explicit point of reference called a permalink • Permalinks make it possible for people to link to each other’s posts: share and discuss • Readers, possibly without a weblog, are invited to join as all posts have a comment link Weblog research

  4. Anatomy of Weblogs • For example: my weblog Weblog research

  5. Weblog Research is about … • Humans who share findings, thoughts, ideas and sometimes feelings in their weblogs • Computers which make it possible to create weblogs, read weblogs, and to comment and to link • Studies which analyse why and how people blog about what and to whom • Laboratory: weblog researchers need a stable environment in which to conduct their research Weblog research

  6. Do we want to research weblogs … • Blog (short for weblog, we-blog) was word of the year 2004 by Merriam Webster. To blog, blogger, blogging, blogosphere, etc. • Communications of the ACM (CACM) carried a special issue on weblogs (December 2004) • Unfiltered and Public For the first time we get access to a large body of material on a particular person, written by that same person • Research relevance Social studies, Knowledge Management (for professional weblogs), education, linguistics … and even Semantic Blogging (combining Semantic Web and blogging) has been coined • Compare Digital Cities research by Beckers / Van den Bersselaar (at SWI) Weblog research

  7. BlogTrace the Laboratory (1) • Weblogs are represented as HTML pages • Complex layout, difficult to find the posts • Manual research is extremely labour intensive • There is a serious lack of tools that support weblog research Weblog research

  8. BlogTrace the Laboratory (2) • BlogTrace spider makes data collection and research a lot easier • Automatically extracts posts from the HTML • Generates the link structure of the weblog and represents it as RDF/OWL • Generates an RSS feed that contains all posts for a weblog • Implemented using induction algorithms, which learn what are posts and what is layout Weblog research

  9. Ontologies used in BlogTrace • DC: Dublin core (names, dates, descriptions) • FOAF: Friend of a friend (documents, people) • RSS 1.0 (RDF): Really simple syndication (representation of full posts) • Link ontology, for example a link (href in HTML) becomes: • Link link:sourceDocument <http://…/>; • Link link:targetDocument <http://…/>; • Link link:anchorText “interesting site”; • Etc. Weblog research

  10. Weblogs can now be studied … • Even using Semantic Web technology (RDF/OWL) link:WeblogPostLink rdfs:subClassOf link:SimpleLink; rdfs:comment "A WeblogPostLink is a SimpleLink if and only if both the source and the target documents are weblog posts (RSS items)."; rdfs:label "WeblogPostLink"; owl:intersectionOf (link:SimpleLink [ a owl:Restriction; owl:onProperty link:sourceDocument; owl:someValuesFrom rss:item ] [ a owl:Restriction; owl:onProperty link:targetDocument; owl:someValuesFrom rss:item ]). link:WeblogPostLink rdfs:subClassOf link:Link; rdfs:comment "A WeblogPostLink is a Link if and only if both the source and the target documents are weblog posts (RSS items)"; owl:intersectionOf (link:Link [ a owl:Restriction; owl:onProperty link:sourceDocument; owl:someValuesFrom rss:item ] [ a owl:Restriction; owl:onProperty link:targetDocument; owl:someValuesFrom rss:item ]). Weblog research

  11. Some Weblog Research Questions • Weblog communities • Do they exist? • How can they be defined and found? • What is the social structure? • What are the conventions in the community? • Text analysis of weblogs • What do people blog about (terms, topics)? • Do they share terminology? • Can personal conceptualisations be extracted? • Conversations • Can linked weblog posts be seen as conversations? • Can we identify when there is a “knowledge flow”? Weblog research

  12. Implementations and Papers • Weblog communities: • Visual Settlements • Graphically displays weblog community linkage based on a “weblog is a city” metaphor • Community determined by “Virtual Settlements” paper (Efimova & Hendrick, 2005) • Text analysis of weblogs: • Sigmund (Anjewierden, Brussee & Efimova, 2004) • Co-occurrence based statistical algorithm that identifies concepts and their relations for a weblog • Conversations: • Knowledge flows (Anjewierden, De Hoog, Brussee & Efimova, 2005) • Hypothesis: chance of a knowledge flow is greater when the sender and receiver share conceptualisations Weblog research

  13. Visual Settlements • Idea • Can we compress a weblog to a single picture? • Such that we can use the picture to compare it to other weblogs in a community • And, of course, learn something … • Inspiration • Maps in general • Books by Edward Tufte on “Information Design” • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) • Envisioning Information (1990) • Beautiful Evidence (2005; forthcoming) • (Discovered Tufte by blog reading) Weblog research

  14. My blog as a Visual Settlement

  15. Anatomy of Visual Settlements Without links in the community (house) I link to someone (I’m at work) Someone links to me (I’m in the park) Size: number of words in the post Layout: if I link to earlier posts they are close Time: early post in center, radiate outwards

  16. Sigmund • Idea • Using co-occurrence to determine whether terms are related • Related terms might point to conceptualisations of the blogger • And, these conceptualisations might be shared by other bloggers • Supported by • Tools that are part of my regular research on methods to support ontology development from documents • In particular: term extraction and named entity recognition Weblog research

  17. Making a Difference • Idea • In a community of bloggers it is likely terminology is shared • Finding the shared terms is interesting (see Sigmund) • But a blogger is a person and not a web page • So, what makes them different? • Implementation • Run Sigmund on all blogs in a community • Find terms that are commonfor a particular blog and not common for others in the community • Example: Making a Difference post Weblog research

  18. Knowledge Flows • Idea and Motivation • When bloggers link to a post of other bloggers • Could it be a “knowledge flow”? • Motivated by potential use as a knowledge management tool • Implementation • Use Sigmund’s co-occurrence algorithm • Term overlap in linked posts is the main metric • Make a distinction between shared and agreed terms (used by both bloggers) and private terms (used by one of blogger) Weblog research

  19. Knowledge Flows • Idea and Motivation • When bloggers link to a post of other bloggers • Could it be a “knowledge flow”? • Motivated by potential use as a knowledge management tool • Implementation • Use Sigmund’s co-occurrence algorithm • Term overlap in linked posts is the main metric • Make a distinction between shared and agreed terms (used by both bloggers) and private terms (used by one of blogger) Weblog research

  20. Weblogs for Researchers • Experiment (Metis project) • Six researchers (previously non-bloggers) started a weblog to get hands-on experience • Two gave up rather early • One thinks about underpants when blogging • Three (includes myself) continue after the experiment finished • Evaluation • Posts are not emails (everybody can read them!) • Posts are not academic papers • Developing a blogging style (how and about what you blog) is difficult and different for everybody Weblog research

  21. Conclusions (1) • Blogging as a tool for researchers • Try it! • Works for me, both reading and writing • By sharing ideas on your blog, you may get help! Weblog research

  22. Conclusions (2) • Enormous amount of data (paradise for someone like me) • Tempting to continue my own weblog research • If others have better ideas than I have, and some do, I gladly return to my role as supporting others to do their weblog research Weblog research

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