The Redosphere vs. The Blueosphere: Political Blogging In America

Robert Ackland did a study (in April '05) that looked at mapping the US Political blosophere with some interesting results. Ackland whose research upheld earlier works by Adamic and Glance concluded the following:

- conservative bloggers have more active linking behaviour than liberal
- conservative bloggers are more densely connected
- conservative bloggers are less likely to link outside of their own community

To help quantify the results, Akland used a scoring system based on linking structures to ‘authorities’ (high referenced pages on a particular topic) and ‘hubs’ (pages that point that a particular authority).

He concluded that conservative blogs occupy 9 out of 10 top positions in terms of authorities and hub scores. The end result?



“the tendency for conservative bloggers to link more intensively to one another is having a market impact on their relative online visibility.”

Is there a communication strategy behind the ‘redospheres’ approach? Or is it more a case of chance? Has anyone truly figured out how the edge might influence the centre yet?

By chance or design one thing is for sure. The impact of new media and in this case the ‘redosphere’ and the ‘bluesophere’ on purple America are only just beginning to be understood.