Eszter's Blog

More coming soon…

eszter — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:50:46 +0000

I’m shocked by how long it’s been since I’ve posted on here. I’ve put up a few posts over at Crooked Timber since I stopped posting here, but not many. I’m posting this to say that I’ll soon be back! I have collected some very intriguing data on Internet uses by US young adults and am excited to share them here and elsewhere.

In the meantime, I do post with some regularity on Twitter.

links for 2010-06-15

eszter — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:02:55 +0000

Career Advice: Shut Up and Write

(IHE) discusses different types of writing groups

(tags: writing research productivity support)

links for 2010-06-14

eszter — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:02:31 +0000

I Can Has Cheezburger Blog Leads to a Web Empire

(NYTimes) – Northwestern alum behind the LOLCATS empire

(tags: article bio northwestern-alum lolcats)
If It Was My Home – Visualizing the BP Oil Spill Disaster

map of oil spill over Budapest – shows that spill would cover most of Hungary

(tags: maps visualization disaster nature environment)
Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! – Roger Ebert's Journal

(tags: twitter)
What Can High School Students Contribute to Wikipedia?

(tags: teaching wikipedia students participation)
Create Your Syllabus With a Spreadsheet and a Calendar App

(ProfHacker – CHE)

(tags: calendar syllabus teaching tips howto)
World Cup 2010 Twitter replay

very nice visualization of tweets and in-game happenings during 2010 World Cup games

(tags: visualization sports twitter)

Neat visualization of World-Cup-related tweets

eszter — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:57:50 +0000

The Guardian’s replay of Twitter posts during various World Cup games is great! Pick a game by clicking on one of the colorful dots – as opposed to the gray ones that signal games not yet played – and not only see the changing relative popularity of related tweet themes, but also see when things happened during the game. (In addition to these showing up on the side next to players’ names as time goes by, you can also see the entire game time line below the figure and move to any specific point by dragging the blue arrow.) Very cool. (Tx: Gilad)

A fresh look at the left and right political blogospheres

eszter — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:22:21 +0000

It’s exciting to see a paper about blogs across the political spectrum that goes beyond the by-now rather common practice of looking at who talks to whom among bloggers (e.g., whether there are any cross-ideological conversations going on). Yochai Benkler, Aaron Shaw and Victoria Stodden of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society have just released “A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right” showing some significant differences in types of blog platforms used (with different affordances), co-authorships and levels of participation among blogs of different political persuasions. Here is one example of specific findings (based on analyses of 155 top political blogs):

Over 40% of blogs on the left adopt platforms with enhanced user participation features. Only about 13% of blogs on the right do so. While there is substantial overlap, and comments of some level of visibility are used in the vast majority of blogs on both sides of the political divide, the left adopts enabling technologies that make user-generated diaries and blogs more central to the site to a significantly greater degree than does the right. (p. 22.)

There are lots of other interesting results in the paper so I highly recommend reading it [pdf].
It’s very clearly written and summarizes related literature well so in case this is not an area you’ve been following, this is a good piece with which to start to familiarize yourself with related debates. If it is an area that you’ve been following then this is a must-read to see some truly original contributions to the literature.

For more on this elsewhere, Ari Melber has an interview with Yochai Benkler on this research in The Nation.