He Links Me, He Links Me Not

Do political blogs stay in their own ideological cocoons, or seek to engage the opposition? Do they limit their cross-spectrum linking to straw-man gotchas, or gen-u-ine debates? If you detest the word "blogs," is this still interesting if you substitute the word "people"? Some of these questions are addressed in this interesting, if small-looking, new study. My initial beef would be classifying people across a single political axis….

Comments

[Julian Sanchez]

Ah, you beat me to the link. And I think that last observation is right on. I'm just guessing here, but I bet bloggers off the standard left-right axis, like libertarians, are a big source of interconnectivity, because they're more likely to both read and be read by both conservative and liberal blogs, where they'll overlap on different issues.

[David T. Beito]

I noticed the same thing. A lot of folks on the left and right don't know what to make of us, hence the Huffington blog-center has few links for libertarian blogs, especially antiwar ones.

[The Lonewacko Blog]

I'm on very few blogrolls and if I had my way I'd just be listed in directories. Being on someone's blogroll tends to imply ideological agreement. If you piss the linker off enough, they just might remove you. For a laugh, consider someone who's on Blogs For Bush's blogroll. Do they dare criticize Our Leader without facing the possibility of being delinked?

[Eddy]

I find interesting the link endpoints. That is, in looking at the blogroll links it is clear that the cross-linking tends to cluster mostly to three or four sites on each side of the little red/blue dodge ball because it may show which are the more centrist sites. I also wonder about the apparent directional arrows and if there is any significance of red to blue vs blue to red links in rolls vs posts.

Now all someone needs to do is to link to all of them to be the center of the universe. Muwaah ha ha.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Um, birds of a feather flock together?

[Chuck]

I am creating my own list of links, on my blog. It's a list of links to all blogs that are not linked to themselves. I'm stuck, though...should my own blog be included in the list or not?

[Gottlob Frege]

Aieee! (Head explodes)

[thoreau]

Chuck-

I think Bertrand Russell devoted some effort to your dilemma.

[Chuck]

thoreau--

OK, I confess, this is Russell's paradox again, all dressed up. But it's funny how middle school students have no problem understanding the paradox when I put it in terms of web pages and links.

Gottlob--

Your book is still a masterpiece anyway.