connectivity practices and activity of greek political blogs希腊政治博客的连接方式和活动.pdfVIP

Future Internet 2012, 4, 719-736; doi:10.3390/fi4030719 OPEN ACCESS future internet ISSN 1999-5903 /journal/futureinternet Article Connectivity Practices and Activity of Greek Political Blogs Kostas Zafiropoulos Department of International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Egnatia 156, Thessaloniki 54006, Greece; E-Mail: kz@uom.gr; Tel.: +30-2310-891-487; Fax: +30-2310-891-285 Received: 1 May 2012; in revised form: 19 July 2012 / Accepted: 30 July 2012 / Published: 14 August 2012 Abstract: This paper uses Social Network Analysis indexes to study Greek political blogs. The indexes describe bloggers’ community recommendations, centrality and bloggers’ attempt to form spheres of influence. Five Social Network Analysis indexes are used: incoming links, normalized betweenness, outgoing links, number of 1-cliques a blog belongs to, and size of blog’s ego-network. By recording 127 Greek political blogs, the paper finds that there are two distinct blog performance properties regarding connectivity: Only a few blogs serve as authority blogs having many incoming links and centrality, while a few others try to expand their influence territory by having many outgoing links and forming larger 1-cliques and ego-networks. Next, the paper associates the proposed indexes with blogs’ and users’ community activity. Authority blogs present high blog activity and users’ community activity, as