Blog searching

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to demonstrate how blog searching can be used as a retrospective source of public opinion.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper a variety of blog searching techniques are described and illustrated with a case study of the Danish cartoons affair.FindingsA time series analysis of related blog postings suggests that the Danish cartoons issue attracted little attention in the English‐speaking world for four months after the initial publication of the cartoons, exploding only after the simultaneous start of diplomatic sanctions and a commercial boycott.Research limitations/implicationsBlogs only reveal the opinions of bloggers, and blog analysis is language‐specific. Sections of the world and the population of individual countries that do not have access to the internet will not be adequately represented in blogspace. Moreover, bloggers are self‐selected and probably not representative of internet users.Originality/valueThe existence of blog search engines now allows researchers to search blogspace for posts relating to any given debate, seeking either the opinions of blogging pundits or casual mentions in personal journals. It is possible to use blogs to examine topics before they first attract mass media attention, as well as to dissect ongoing discussions. This gives a retrospective source of public opinion that is unique to blog search engines.

OpinionML—Opinion Markup Language for Sentiment Representation

“…The Pew Internet and American Life Project surveyed in 2013 and found that almost 81% of the U.S. adult population had access to the internet, and of this ratio, 73% were using social media. Among these social media, the most popular were Facebook (www.facebook.com), Twitter (www.twitter.com), myspace (www.myspace.com), and blogger [2] (www.blogger.com).…”

Infodemiology of Alcohol Use in Hong Kong Mentioned on Blogs: Infoveillance Study

“…In fact, only 11.5% (19/165) of them did so, with limited information regarding the drinking amount and duration. It was thus difficult to differentiate between binge and non-binge drinking (binge drinking=0%; non-binge drinking=26.3%, 5/19; undetermined=73.7%, 14/19) (Figure 9; [35]). The others were mostly personal diary, opinion, or emotional outlet (28.1%, 41/146) (Figure 10).…”

“…There were concerns that even in the same search engine, the search results may be different over time [14,44]. In our case, it might be explained by the (1) inherent limitation in the search algorithms of Google, which gave only an approximate estimate for query with large results, and (2) inconsistency of the search database due to a variable number of splogs (or spam blogs) and blogs that were previously not linked [35,44,56]. Of note, a large part of the Google Search algorithm was unknown to the public, aggravating sampling uncertainty in our study.…”

“…Like other social networking sites, blogs are featured by their time stamps, consumer-generated content, and expansile database, making them potentially useful for longitudinal data retrieval and analysis [35,36]. In fact, blog analysis has become increasingly popular in various domains.…”

“…Some (eg, time series scanning, semantic analysis) require special software and significant investment of time and computing resources [35]. This has greatly reduced its practicability in public health research done by clinicians who might not otherwise know much about computer programming.…”