An interesting map showing the size and influence of Arabic Blogs online produced by Harvard U. Here is some coverage.
From that set, researchers identified the most connected blogs, i.e. those that were the most linked to, and then used a team of Arabic speakers to further analyze the content.
I can only guess what the definitions are:
- Size: Influence (number of comments or number of blog posts over time?)
- Color: Country (IP-address?)
- proximity: Share a connection (number of references to the blog?)
To be fair, I haven’t read the full report form Harvard (PDF). Then I would know… But you can read it I think where it says Method Overview.
Scatter plots aren’t really useful I believe for this type of thing, for a clear understanding of the relationship between one blog and another. I would suggest they use this method, which provides a greater understanding of the web and how they interlink (small nodes would represent small sections on the pie). It would reduce their overlapping of lines at-least. It would also allow us to see how many link to one individual blog (there may be one mega-node).
I would also suggest Harvard should release the raw data to the public. Seems like they only want to supply the image. Bunch of #### #### snobs.
