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Wednesday, August 9, 2006
The Network is a Format 
| | Yet NPR isn't a format. It's a network. I wonder if the results would have been different if the category had been "public radio", or if NPR answers had been lumped together with News/Talk, the #1 format in the first two categories. |
Beats black & blue
| | Valdis Krebs in Perpetually Polarized maps (ya gotta see the graphic) how a third (purple) group has emerged (among bookbuyers) in addition to left (blue) and right (red): |
| | ...we see a new dynamic -- instead of two clusters, we now have three! This middle group is based on Thomas Friedman's very popular books and other books his readers often buy. It is surprising to me that the center is a fairly polarized structure -- many more connections within the group, then outside of the group. I expected the middle group to have more bridges between the left and the right -- like the purple node towrds the bottom of the map. |
| | The division between left and right remains strong -- polarization and the political food fight continues. Social network metrics[Krackhardt's E/I ratio], as well as the visuals, show three dense clusters with high preference for homogeneous choices. Echo chambers, on the right and left -- and now in the middle -- are apparent amongst readers of popular political books in America. As the 2006 political season gathers steam, we will attempt to post more frequent updates on the purchase patterns of polemics. |
| | For what it's worth, I have all but one of the purple books (including three by Tom Friedman), and two blue books (American Theocracy and Conservatives Without Conscience) by two otherwise red guys (Kevin Phillips and John Dean). |
Peace out
Quotes du jour
| | We The People have allowed our precious republic to be shanghaied by a duopoly more outrageous and insidious than the Telecom duopoly, and that¹s saying something. At least those fuckers will come over to your house and fix the wiring. Eventually. |
| | ...the Republicans have been hijacked by the neocons and the Democrats have been hijacked by the consultants. It¹s worse than that, of course... |
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