Keynoting BlogHer White House Project
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Feb
3
What do you think this image means?
Yesterday, at Fem2pt0, I got to listen to Stanislaus Magniant from Linkfluence describe precisely what that image, and numerous network maps that can be derived from the information that created that image, means – by itself, in relation to the progressive blogosphere, the conservative blogosphere, the entire political blogosphere and conversation around specific issues like the family planning component that was dropped from the house stimulus bill.
The text of Magniant comments are not yet available online or in written format and if they become available, I will update this post. But in the meantime, here are some pieces of information he offered about what he found after being asked to do this work by the organizers of Fem2pt0, courtesy of Twitter tweets by attendees (they are in reverse chrono order of how the presentation was given):
sairy: Stan says even though @huffingtonpost is run by a woman, there’s not enough content by women, so we need more women there.
Jillfoster: Linkfluence underscores the larger your network, the larger your influence on web 2.0
jenmyronuk: Looking at data representation of issues on the political map — volume of discussions between liberal + conservative.
NPerpetuite: Stan Magniant from linkfluence “has mapped” the feminist blogosphere. http://twitpic.com/1asi6 [great photo of Magniant and the large projected network map]
sairy: Reproductive rights in terms of discussion on the feminist blogosphere – much larger of an issue – but often conservatives are louder
csamuels: Feminist blogers still tier 2 or 3 though tight community
nerdette: But the analysis in the visualization we’re looking at shows the feminist blogs are not closely linked to the Conservative blogs
nerdette: Linkage analysis – women/fem blogs are not ghettoized in the blogosphere – Prog blogs link to us, we link back
nerdette: Linkfluence: Feminist blogosphere is closest to the Progressive b’sphere (shocker!
sairy: “feminist web… very close to the progressive community” when data mashed up with political blogosphere
csamuels: Stanislaus Magniant maps the social web of Feminism/Fem 2.0. “A dense and connected, vibrant and reactive community.”
Stan offered up more specific information today regarding how a site fell into their radar for this particular project, including this:
As briefly mentioned during the introduction, it is not easy to pinpoint a “feminist site”. There’s no technical criteria that says “this is a feminist site” (and even in real life, the exact definition of “feminist” is not always clear-cut). We basically used a triple filter:
1-using the good list of sites, blogs and organizations linking to and associated with the fem2pt0 conference, we used a “crawler” program to identify sites in the immediate vicinity ie. in direct connections with this core set of sites.
2- second filter was based on semantic criteria to detect “telltale” expressions in sites’ content (several dozens) related to a number of top-level feminist issues (such as economic equality, reproductive rights, women in politics, home/life balance, etc.)
3- last but not least, specialized web analysts validated/corrected the data prior to inclusion in final data set.
You can also find more information about our methodology and approach at http://linkfluence.net/?p=company#title2
You can see a list of the top 30 feminist blogs, according to this research, after the jump. If you aren’t sure what the sites are, just ask in the comments and I’ll give you more info based on my experience with pretty much all if not most of these blogs and bloggers.
More about the conference itself tomorrow, but for those who can’t wait, you can read this excellent liveblog of the opening plenary with Eleanor Smeal, Kim Gandy and other luminaries in womens’ rights activism for more than five decades.
UPDATE: TechPresident and others are writing about this mapping of the feminist web. I’ll continue to update this post with references/interpretations of the Linkfluence info as I find them.
http://www.feministing.com/
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/
http://www.feministe.us/blog/
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/
http://www.now.org/
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
http://community.livejournal.com/
http://www.womensenews.org/
http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/
http://www.msmagazine.com/
http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/
http://www.feminist.org/
http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/
http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/
http://www.thecurvature.com/
http://www.guttmacher.org/
http://www.thefword.org.uk/
http://viv.id.au/blog/
http://www.womanist-musings.com/
http://www.blogher.org/
http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/
http://www.ppaction.org/
http://renegadeevolution.blogspot.com/
http://www.naral.org/
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/
http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/
http://abyss2hope.blogspot.com/
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:50 pm February 3rd, 2009 in BlogHer, Gender, Media, Politics, Tech, Women, Writing, activism, leadership, social media
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3 Responses to “[update] Feminism in the Blogosphere & The Top 30 Feminist Blogs”
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Thanks for the link to my liveblogging, Jill!
Well this list is rather uninspired. I can personally name 10 blogs off the top of my head that are doing the work of empowering women. I’m not sure if that’s what your categorization includes as it’s highly subjective. Which is a pity. This only shows how many women, particularly women who are NOT WHITE are being excluded. And no it’s not the responsibility of WOC to say, “look over here, you’ve passed us by” because this has been par for the course.
Hi Faith – thanks for reading and commenting.
I’m definitely a messenger here – I haven’t studied the methodology used by Linkfluence at all and that’s what led to that list of 30.
Speaking only for myself, I recognize many of the names on the list, but I recognize a number of them as organizations that get linked to for resource information, they don’t link back out. And that’s a problem of one type.
I also know that if I look at my sidebar and the blogs listed under “All Things Women,” many of which are by WOC, hardly any of them are on that list of 30.
Now – that reflects me – as a general rule, I do not read any so-called big or big box blogs – by anyone, male, female, black, white. I just prefer smaller blogs in general, through which I get to know the individual author – their voice, trust them and so on. I keep RSS feeds for the larger ones, like feministing and BlogHer, but the smaller ones are the ones I really like to follow for opinion and what is striking people on any given day. I like to have conversations a lot of times, and the big ones – it’s so much harder to follow conversations there.
I’m assuming you’re writing this:
“And no it’s not the responsibility of WOC to say, “look over here, you’ve passed us by” because this has been par for the course.”
because you’ve heard that suggested to POC before. I’m hoping you mean that as a general statement to whomever is reading. When I first started adding POC blogs on purpose with a conscientiousness, I actually asked a few WOC bloggers for suggestions and then I emailed those bloggers and asked permission to blogroll them – because I’d been told that some WOC might not want to be blogrolled here. But I got an overwhelmingly positive response, and it was no problem at all to ask.
I did go through a bit of a soulsearching to figure out whether to have a separate category on the sidebar for POC or WOC blogs but in the end, decided not to separate them out. I’m still not 100% sure on that one.
Anyway – I agree with you. The list isn’t particularly inspiring – but then I was at the presentation and I wasn’t expecting it to be inspiring – I figured it would be pretty numerically-based.
What is inspiring to me about it is how seeing it motivates me to figure out who me connecting to you, you connecting to me and us connecting to others on issues and subject matter that we care about can help us maybe not get “as big” as the 30 or whatever, but at least amplify what we want to say.
Anyway – thanks. I look forward to checking out your blog.