Recently I was forwarded an e-mail stating: “Political junkies may want to check out our research on the Liberal's leadership race, as it has played out on the Internet: www.infoscapelab.ca/gritrace.”
It was sent on behalf of Greg Elmer, Bell Globemedia Research Chair Director, and director of Infoscape Research Lab at Ryerson University. Elmer’s research team has been tracking blogosphere and news coverage of the Liberal Leadership race since August 25, 2006.
Elmer was unavailable for an interview on Friday, Nov. 24, but his research team was. I spoke with research associate and lab coordinator Zach Devereaux, and Elmer's other research associates Ganaele Langlois, Joanna Redden, Peter Ryan, and Fenwick McKelvey.
Oksana Lypowecky: Why did you decide to track the Liberal Leadership race and bloggers?
Zach Devereaux: We have a research lab called Infoscape Research Lab and we do new media research. We had completed some projects in the past looking at the federal election.
Peter (Ryan) for example, completed a paper that evaluated coverage online by websites. Greg Elmer and myself completed a paper looking at framing of different issues. All those publications, Peter’s is forth coming, are available on our website – Infoscapelab.ca.
We decided the next relatively large political event in Canada would be the Leadership race and that we would use our techniques and methodologies to follow the blogosphere and news about the Liberal Leadership race. We (decided we) would do a research project that aimed to compare the differences between blogs and news over time and how they covered the candidates.
OL: Why compare blogs and news?
Ganaele Langlois: It’s new media and old media. Blogging is an emerging new form of reporting and so the idea is to compare those two – how are they different? Compare blogging to old traditional media news. The media react to what they define as news – and bloggers have a different perspective.
OL: What kind of things are you finding?
ZD: We have findings posted by week each week from September until now.
GL: We are finding that the news coverage reacts to events. As with the blogosphere you will see variations, which are not as intense.
ZD: Not as volatile.
Peter Ryan: Some of them (bloggers) do investigative pieces as well, which is interesting because that was once one of the functions of journalism. To write investigative pieces, things that will open up people’s eyes to candidates, also address public opinion, try to keep the public informed. It’s still serving that function. Maybe blogs are serving that function a different way now – compared to news. That’s what we’re trying to help figure out – who is representing public opinion.
ZD: Another reason we specifically wanted to cover the blogoshpere - there is partisan blogging by both youth and more mature bloggers who affiliate openly with different candidates. We did see over time that some of the candidates have strong online movements. Like (Gerard) Kennedy has a very strong online movement and that differentiates some of the top tier candidates from the other candidates.
Fenwick McKelvey: People are trying to influence politics or make a story. We can see how certain issues are being framed in the blogoshere or in the newspaper media. People will say ‘How will it help my issue?’ or ‘How do I influence these different areas of communication?’
If you’re a non-profit organization or a person on the street trying to get your issue out into politics – the media is one of the main vehicles. We can see what are some strategies; we can try to break into the top 20 issues that are being discussed right now. If you're working for poverty in Canada or interested in women’s rights or things like that – if you’re not in the top 20 issues – how are you going to be influencing public consciousness or politicians at the same time?
OL: You think the blogs influence the politicians?
Collectively: Yes
GL: There’s a real immediate relationship.
FM: The Dion campaign had conference calls with bloggers.
PR: There are certain things candidates do to facilitate blog buzz and blog uptake of issues. Like newsletters, and affiliate campaigns where you put on your blog – that shows you’re part of a specific group. And there are non-partisan blog movements as well. There are sites where bloggers sign up not to be considered on one side or another side of a particular candidate. There are techniques people use and it’s probably since the last federal election in the United States that blogging has become a very strong political vehicle. Since the Howard Dean campaign.
OL: How do you find your bloggers?
GL: Bloggers are selected by issues and candidates and we get a list of top 100 blogs each week. Then we look at top 10 bloggers of each week. Who ever is blogging the most.
ZD: We have a couple of techniques. One method that we use is to take a candidate by name and to find data about the candidate by name in Google News and Google Blog Search.
Another technique we use is to look at issues by going to official candidate campaign websites and see what issues are important for the candidates. And then we follow those issues over time – in the blog search and the news.
We are now looking at bloggers in relation to the candidates. So we see of all this top 100 coverage – top 100 coverage by candidate, top 100 coverage by issue, who are the top bloggers in those stories and then we map how those bloggers break down per candidate.
OL: I found a blogger who posted a letter from Infoscape Lab on his blog about being the top blogger the week of Nov. 17.
ZD: A lot of that happens in the blogosphere.
FM: It’s an interesting phenomenon because it’s so wired in together - the blog discussion. When someone posts - the blogosphere reverberates. (It) responds to that dialogue. It’s funny.
PR: That’s a new issue for many researchers.
OL: What are your news sources?
ZD: All 4,000 plus sources that are in Google News. So how ever many sources there are in Google News. We look at other aggregators, but right now the main aggregators we are working with is Google.
OL: Aggravators?
Collectively: Aggregators
ZD: It’s a search engine, news engine … sites that bring together multiple sources.
OL: Has this research been published?
PR: We haven’t gotten to our publication phase. We will be doing some major research findings after the convention is done – because we want to see from the beginning to the end how does this play out.
GL: Winnipeg Free Press, Toronto Star has covered our research.
ZD: This study has been covered in the blogs that are out there.
Infoscape Lab’s final report of the Liberal Leadership Race is to be released Monday, Nov. 27 in advance of the Liberal Leadership Convention in Montreal.
Greg Elmer is attending the convention, “Seeing what’s happening on the ground,” as one of his researches puts it. “Seeing how blogs are used on the ground.”
The team will still be doing analysis throughout the convention. The convention accredited a certain amount of bloggers to blog live from the convention. Infospace Research Lab has been accredited.
Pie chart depicting the findings of the coverage of candidates in the Blogosphere from Nov. 11 - 17.
See: http://www.infoscapelab.ca/node/133
