Anthropology of the Blogosphere - Carnivals as Potlatches
Researchers "Geocoding the Blogosphere" Portend Stronger, More Authentic Detection and Analysis of Social Trendshttp://www.buffalo.edu/news/fast-execute.cgi/article-page.html?article=71440009
Blog content analysis permits 'weather reports' on socio-politics of cities, regionsResearchers in the University at Buffalo's School of Informatics have undertaken a long-term research project to study how information from blogs produced in specific American urban areas reflects the political agendas, opinions, attitudes and cultural idiosyncrasies of the general population of those places.------------snip--------------
"We cannot ignore the blog," Lin says. "It is a rapidly emerging political and cultural entity whose importance is likely to increase. It is our contention that blogs not only tell us about those who write them, but quite a bit about particular urban areas in which we find them."
An Anthropologist in the Blogosphere
http://ambivablog.typepad.com/ambivablog/2005/02/an_anthropologi.html
Hat tip: Silflay Hraka (http://silflayhraka.com/)Let's try a simple substitution: "The link is economic, political,
kinship-oriented, legal, mythological, religious, magical, practical, personal
and social. By moving such an object through the virtual landscape, the
link-giver so to speak rearranges the fabric of sociality - and it is this that
forms the basis of the link's power."
There you have the beginnings of an
anthropology of the blogosphere.
------------snip----------------
The "Carnival of the Vanities," the brainstorm of Bigwig
(http://silflayhraka.com/archives/005487.html) at Silflay Hraka
(http://silflayhraka.com/) -- for which I have a special affection, as the first
blog I ever linked to and the ritual bestower of my first link
(http://silflayhraka.com/archives/005502.html) -- and all its Carnival offspring
are nothing other than potlatches: big link giveaways that bloggers vie to host,
for all those reasons -- the prestige, the exposure, the friendship, the curiosity, the pleasure, in no particular order.
