Holy freaking schnieke, Batman!!

Tim from Opinion Bug sent me this link to a very academic sounding report. You can download the report here.

Here is the gist of it, as reported by the World Peace Herald:

The study was conducted by Natalie Glance of Intelliseek, a marketing intelligence firm in Cincinnati, and Lada Adamic of HP Labs, the main laboratory for Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, Calif. It showed that of the 1,494 most influential blogs, during the two months leading up to the election, 759 were liberal in worldview, while 735 were conservative. The conservatives, however, showed a "greater tendency" to link to other blogs than did the liberals -- on average 15.1 links per conservative blog to 13.6 for the liberals. That made them more powerful agents of persuasion.

"We've been looking at blogs for about a year," Glance said. "There was some hope that the blogosphere would help bridge the different opinions in America, but what we are seeing is in an election year, it was divisive online and there was a strong tendency for separation of differences."

Conservative blogs apparently were the most influential sites, generating huge flows of traffic to right-leaning news organizations, such as the National Review magazine and Fox News television. The bloggers' links also pushed up the readership numbers for publications such as The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal's online Opinion Journal and The Washington Times, Glance said.

*gasp*

Are you kidding me?

*reality check*

No freaking way?

*double check report*

Simply un-freaking-believable.

*clears throat*

Well, you can't argue with science, can you?

Anyway, the most interesting factoid in the report, as far as The Jawa Report is concerned, is that among the top 20 most influential blogs, My Pet Jawa is linked by precisely 0 liberal blogs. Dean Esmay, #19, is at least linked by 8 and Captain Ed, #6, by 5.

The only one that even comes close is the now nearly defunct Allah, #11, who only has 2 links by liberals to him. J-O-O's, I'm sure.

I don't know whether to wear that as a badge of honor, or what?

Anyway, no time for a more thorough analysis. I'll get around to that later.

In the meantime I'll try to make sure this doesn't go to my head.

Bitches.....

Click the image below for a larger view. Somebody might want to let some of the other bloggers know about this.

Posted by: Rusty at 05:15 PM | Comments (23) | Add Comment
Post contains 442 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Cool. Go ahead and let it go to your head. You have a neat blog and should be proud. Besides, some lll will always come along and try to knock you outta your place.

Posted by: Bubbe at March 24, 2005 05:34 PM (4BlQ+)

2 Notice left-vs-right mentions of political figures. Huge huge difference of right over left of mentioning Arafat.

Posted by: Laurence Simon at March 24, 2005 06:26 PM (rOZ8t)

3 Way to go, my man!

Posted by: Gordon at March 24, 2005 06:42 PM (dEFhD)

4 If the lefty blogs don't link to you then where do the moonbats that from time to time befoul your comments section come from? I posted a reply to some particularly vile commenter the other day and he emailed me a death threat - at least I think that's what it was, it was pretty incoherent. I came across you only a few weeks ago and I think your site is fun. Congratulations!

Posted by: Suburban Guy at March 24, 2005 07:02 PM (kBfY4)

5 Congratulations, Rusty. Keeping a site going with frequent updates isn't a small task. Your hard work is rewarded.

Posted by: bodybagger at March 24, 2005 07:32 PM (cjCfM)

6 Rusty: Doesn't this follow the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem ranking pretty closely, excluding non-political blogs? I'm pretty sure neither you nor I would operationalize "influence" in precisely this way, but for all we know it's closely associated with citations. Congratulations. Keep up the good work. By the way, by this measure (citations) the most influencial political scientist in the world is Seymour Martin Lipset. But it sort of begs the question of whether political scientists are all that influencial in the first place.

Posted by: Demosophist at March 24, 2005 07:34 PM (Dfdj0)

7 You've earned it, Rusty! M

Posted by: mhking at March 24, 2005 07:43 PM (bJ0qq)

8 Suburban guy Probably from one of the commenters Oh, and congrats!

Posted by: CJ at March 24, 2005 11:07 PM (cEqQB)

9 How'd they decide if Sulliven was liberal or conservative?--flip a coin?

Posted by: Attila Girl at March 24, 2005 11:33 PM (R4CXG)

10 This is a conservative blog? I come here for the porn like everybody else. Don't let them kid ya Rusty. Btw, Good job.

Posted by: elliott at March 25, 2005 06:56 AM (0WSZ2)

11 FUKENEH! Way to go! "Keep it UP," she said to the Rusty One! Long live Tattooine!

Posted by: ZiPpo at March 25, 2005 07:14 AM (P7XXv)

12 I don't know what you're bragging about. You know you're not complete without a fatwa. All the praise in the world won't make up for THAT! hehehehe

Posted by: Eric at March 25, 2005 08:11 AM (lK7Sh)

13 Rusty, put down that crack pipe. It's only a mirage. But congrats.

Posted by: BigFire at March 25, 2005 09:27 AM (S6QRd)

14 Yeah, thanks all...but I have serious doubts about this. Anyway, rest assured, I will not rest until I get my fatwa!!!!!!!

Posted by: Rusty Shackleford at March 25, 2005 09:56 AM (JQjhA)

15 It's a great blog, you've earned it. But your color scheme HAS GOT to go.

Posted by: Carlos at March 25, 2005 10:41 AM (8e/V4)

16 You want to, like, help me fix it??

Posted by: Rusty Shackleford at March 25, 2005 10:42 AM (JQjhA)

17 >>>"You want to, like, help me fix it??" oh, you mean as in some actual constructive criticism?

Posted by: Carlos at March 25, 2005 11:32 AM (8e/V4)

18 yeah

Posted by: Rusty Shackleford at March 25, 2005 01:18 PM (JQjhA)

19 Rusty, You definitely need more whitespace. Try changing the middle part to white, with green links, but keep the outer edges garrish green/orange. See how that looks.

Posted by: Carlos at March 25, 2005 01:47 PM (8e/V4)

20 Also, convert the links on the Left side of the page into light orange so you can have some contrast there. It might help "lighten up" the cammo green. Just suggestions to experiment with. I dig your blog, but it's visually very heavy.

Posted by: Carlos at March 25, 2005 02:04 PM (8e/V4)

21 Sounds like Carlos knows what he is talking about.

Posted by: greyrooster at March 26, 2005 08:08 PM (CBNGy)

22 Cooool . . . .

Posted by: large at March 27, 2005 07:31 PM (VRK2g)

23 How was influence defined, how was it measured? Progressives or liberals try not to talk to non progressives - they have their minds made up and get confused when real facts are presented to them. Being progressives is very much like being religious; you do it on faith alone, not objective analysis of data. Just do not tell a progresive that unless you are prepared to fight; or run. Religious people tend to accept that you can not prove God exists. You can not prove the contrary either.

Posted by: Rod Stanton at April 05, 2005 12:01 PM (Wcsda)

Hide Comments | Add Comment