Blogosferas e redes complexas

Dois artigos sobre a blogosfera encontrados hoje:

Empirical analysis of online social networks in the age of Web 2.0

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications Volume 387, Issues 2-3, 15 January 2008, Pages 675-684

Feng Fu^{a, b,} , Lianghuan Liu^{a, b} and Long Wang^{, a, b,}

^aCenter for Systems and Control, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

^bDepartment of Industrial Engineering and Management, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Received 17 July 2007;

revised 30 September 2007.

Available online 9 October 2007.

Abstract

Today the World Wide Web is undergoing a subtle but profound shift to Web 2.0, to become more of a social web. The use of collaborative technologies such as blogs and social networking site (SNS) leads to instant online community in which people communicate rapidly and conveniently with each other. Moreover, there are growing interest and concern regarding the topological structure of these new online social networks. In this paper, we present empirical analysis of statistical properties of two important Chinese online social networks—a blogging network and an SNS open to college students. They are both emerging in the age of Web 2.0. We demonstrate that both networks possess small-world and scale-free features already observed in real-world and artificial networks. In addition, we investigate the distribution of topological distance. Furthermore, we study the correlations between degree (in/out) and degree (in/out), clustering coefficient and degree, popularity (in terms of number of page views) and in-degree (for the blogging network), respectively. We find that the blogging network shows disassortative mixing pattern, whereas the SNS network is an assortative one. Our research may help us to elucidate the self-organizing structural characteristics of these online social networks embedded in technical forms.

Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging

Computers in Human Behavior
Volume 24, Issue 5, September 2008, Pages 1993-2004

Rosanna E. Guadagno, a, , Bradley M. Okdiea and Cassie A. Enoa
aDepartment of Psychology, University of Alabama, P.O. Box 870348, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0348, United States

Available online 19 November 2007.

Abstract
The Big Five personality inventory measures personality based on five key traits: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness [Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Normal personality assessment in clinical practice: The NEO Personality Inventory. Psychological Assessment 4, 5–13]. There is a growing body of evidence indicating that individual differences on the Big Five factors are associated with different types of Internet usage [Amichai-Hamburger, Y., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2003). Loneliness and Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior 19, 71–80; Hamburger, Y. A., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2000). Relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and the different uses of the Internet. Computers in Human Behavior 16, 441–449]. Two studies sought to extend this research to a relatively new online format for expression: blogging. Specifically, we examined whether the different Big Five traits predicted blogging. The results of two studies indicate that people who are high in openness to new experience and high in neuroticism are likely to be bloggers. Additionally, the neuroticism relationship was moderated by gender indicating that women who are high in neuroticism are more likely to be bloggers as compared to those low in neuroticism whereas there was no difference for men. These results indicate that personality factors impact the likelihood of being a blogger and have implications for understanding who blogs.