Blog: Collapsing Ivory Towers? A Hyperlink Analysis of the German Academic Blogosphere
In their analysis Benedikt Fecher (Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society) and Jonas Kaiser (PhD candidate at Zeppelin University and Fellow at HIIG) took a closer look at the linking practices of German-speaking science blogs in order to find out which network clusters science blogs form and if they interact via hyperlinks with actors scientific bloggers from the civil society.
Their analysis of German-speaking science blogs shows that:
a) science blogs are not necessarily clustered around issues or (academic) background but rather form transdisciplinary clusters which are more likely to be influenced by the hosting platforms,
b) scientists and non-scientists link to each other and even though scientists are more popular within the scientific blogosphere, they are also part of the bigger »general” blogosphere, which
c) means that scientists see blogging as a conscious act and are aware of their surroundings and try not to replicate the »ivory tower” 2.0 but rather connect with others.