The document summarizes research mapping the political web in Germany which found that while some traditional media websites received the most links, the structure was only moderately centralized and ensured diversity. It also showed blogs having entered the top sites and different linking patterns between partisan communities, with traditional media receiving the most external attention.

1. Mapping of the German Political Web
Panel: Tracking and Mapping
Political Interaction in Online Social Networks
IR11-Conference
Göteborg/Sweden, October 22nd 2010
Christian Nuernbergk M. A.

2. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Agenda
 Introduction: The Concentration Debate
 Project outline: Methodology and Research Interest
 Findings: Mapping of/Analyzing the German Political Web
 Conclusion

3. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Introduction: Concentration/Centralization-Debate
 Benkler (2006: 242) describes the networked public sphere as an information
environment,
“where few are read by many, but clusters of moderately read sites provide
platforms for vastly greater numbers of speakers than were heard in the mass
media-environment”
 Benkler’s evaluation of studies on network topology suggests that a simple
“rich get richer”-phenomenon is not appropriate to the networked public sphere
 Hindman (2009) questions Benkler’s filter hypothesis and shows with an
extensive analysis of Hitwise clickstreams that still a “small set of winners”
receive “the lion’s share of traffic”
 Audiences on the web in the U.S. seem to be far more concentrated than expected
 Gonzalez-Bailon’s (2009) findings also show that social factors and media coverage
are still underlying the structure of the web

4. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Mapping of the German Political Web: Project Outline
 The mapping was part of an expertise ordered by the German Commission on
Concentration in the Media (KEK): “The Impact of the Internet under the Aspects
of Ensuring Diversity of Opinion” (Project leader: Prof. Christoph Neuberger)
 Project time: October 2009 - March 2010
 Methods: Content analysis/exploratory network analysis
 Research interest: How centralized is the Link structure of the German
political web? Does this structure ensure diversity?
 Which websites are benefiting from the emerging network?
 What positions occupy blogs compared to traditional media?
 What influence does the audience reach have to the linking of a website?

5. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Methodology/Network Crawl
 The original network dataset was provided by Linkfluence Germany, which
mapped the German political web already in the last election term
(“wahlradar.de”)
 The link data was crawled on January 5th, 2010
 The crawling technique included several seed websites in issue-related
communities, partisan communities and media websites from which links were
systematically followed
 Automatically generated attributes of network actors were reviewed at
Muenster University
 The generated network was analyzed and visualized at Muenster University
with UCINET and Gephi
 The crawled hyperlink network consists of binary data (= information about
multiple linking between two websites is missing )

6. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Network graph of
connected websites (5816
websites; 348 isolates not shown)
>> Traditional media with
central network positions
>> Distribution of distinct
links does not completely
follow a power law, but
shows higher concentration
of attention on a handful of
top sites
>> Top quintile of all sites
receives two thirds (66%) of
all distinct inbound links
Right-wing websites (brown)
Conservative websites
(blue)
Media websites (light blue)
Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication

7. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Findings 1: Network Topology and Centralization
 Top 100-sites (= 1,6% of all sites) receive 26% of all identified links
 The network is not densely interlinked, but 70% of all nodes may
hypothetically reach each other per hyperlink navigation with respect to
the direction of each link
 The first-placed topsite receives 1151, the second placed site receives 910
and the third-placed site 788 distinct links from the rest of the websites in
the network (n=6164)
 The average in-degree of a website in the network is only 15,51 (SD: 42,53)
 The network centralization shows that incoming hyperlinks are more
concentrated to a range of websites than to one single top website
(Indegree network centralization: 18%)

8. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Findings 2: Subcommunities and Linking Patterns
Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
 Partisan websites show different linking patterns: conservative
websites (n=1254) in the network are more centralized to specific
party websites in their community (indegree centralization: 65%)
and are showing a stronger homophily in their connectedness (E-I-
Index: -0,7) than other partisan communities
 Left (n=253) and green partisans (n=234) are more connected with
the whole network and less centralized to singular websites in their
community. They demonstrate a higher degree of heterophily
(E-I-Index: +0,51, leftists; +0,22, greens). They also have more
connections to non-partisan blogs
 Blogs and media: While 7824 links were counted from blogs
(n=999) to media sites, media sites (n=182) are hardly linking to
blogs: Just 134 links were dedicated to blogs
 But compared to the whole MAP-network (n=4538), the density in the
blogger-media-network (n=1181) is remarkably higher: 0,043 vs. 0,0033
(or 13-times higher)

9. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Findings 2: Cross-linking between the Subcommunities
 Compared to non-partisan websites and media websites, partisan sites are
less likely to be connected with external sites (int. 90%, ext. 10%)
 Conservative websites receive only 3% of their inbound links from external
websites; also, sites in the Social Democrats’ cluster (ext.: 21%) and liberal
sites (ext.: 24%) favor internal links
 Leftists (46%) and Greens (35%) show different patterns and have more
external links than other analyzed partisan communities
 Media websites are primarily linked from external sites (89%); they do not
prefer to actively link their competitors: the 272 media sites are just
interlinked in 1684 distinct cases (11%)
 Media websites only represent 6% of all sites in the whole MAP-network, but
they get in total 60% of all external links and 23% of all distinct links (ext./int.
not differentiated)

10. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Findings 2: Cross-linking between the Subcommunities
Node size related to betweenness centrality
Link weight: frequency of linking between
subcommunities

11. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
TOP 100-Outlets
(Overall Network,
6164 websites)
Type of Website
Rank: IVW
News-related
visits Germany
12/2009
Rank:
AGOF
internet facts
III-2009
Network
Indegree
(01/2010)
1 spiegel.de/ traditional media outlet 2 3 1151
2 cdu.de/ political party website 910
3 sueddeutsche.de/ traditional media outlet 7 6 788
3 welt.de/ traditional media outlet 4 7 788
5 zeit.de/ traditional media outlet 10 10 750
6 faz.net/ traditional media outlet 8 11 711
7 bundestag.de/ political institution 654
8 taz.de/ traditional media outlet 21 24 644
9 focus.de/ traditional media outlet 5 5 546
10 tagesschau.de/ traditional media outlet 479
11 tagesspiegel.de/ traditional media outlet 20 16 461
12 stern.de/ traditional media outlet 9 8 413
13 bild.de/ traditional media outlet 1 2 412
13 angela-merkel.de/ politician related 412
15 heise.de/tp/ web-only outlet 402
16 ftd.de/ traditional media outlet 13 21 401
17 youtube.de/ social media 394
18 spd.de/ political party website 376
19 fr-online.de/ traditional media outlet 22 25 369
20 handelsblatt.com/ traditional media outlet 12 15 365
21 dradio.de/ traditional media outlet 347
22 basicthinking.de/ blog 311
22 netzpolitik.org/ blog 311
Findings 3:
>> Among the top 100-list 42
traditional media outlets can be
found, especially within the
upper ranks
>> The ranks 1-25 include mainly
websites of media with national
distribution and wider audience
reach
>> Blogs have also entered the
top 100, 2 of them are among
the top 25 in 01/2010
Data source: IVW/AGOF;
Linkfluence in cooperation with
University of Muenster
Rank correlation (Top 100): Indegree 01/2010 compared
to IVW rank: Pearson’s r=0,6, p<0,01
AGOF and IVW ranks (Top 100) with strong linearity:
Pearson’s r>0,8, p<0,001

12. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication

13. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Top Blogs in the German Political Web
 10 Blogs are listed among top 100 political and news related websites
(01/2010, MAP-Network, 4538 websites)
Rank 25: netzpolitik.org and basicthinking.de
(each linked by 217 different sites in the sample)
netzpolitik.org reported 1 million unique visits in july 2010
Rank 38: bildblog.de (173 different sites)
Rank 43: nachdenkseiten.de (169 different sites)
Rank 45: lawblog.de (166 different sites)
Rank 50: spreeblick.de (149 different sites)
Rank 63: spiegelfechter.com (120 different sites)
Rank 64: stefan-niggemeier.de/blog and achgut.com
(each linked by 119 different sites)
Rank 77: blog.fefe.de (103 different sites)

14. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Conclusions
 The observed concentration does not seem to structurally hinder diversity on
the German political web
 This moderate centralized structure prevents that one single news provider or
website overly dominates communication flows
 Traditional media and blogs complement each other, but traditional media still
receives the biggest attention while most of the blogs get none
 Findings show moderate cross-linking between partisan websites. It is not
clear whether this leads to less polarization tendencies
 Further research: more dynamic settings, in which changes within the network
are analyzed and visualized
 Research should also focus on how Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook
may increase different linking patterns

15. Christian Nuernbergk, University of Muenster, Department of Communication
Contact
Christian Nuernbergk M. A.
nuernbergk@uni-muenster.de
Research Department on Internet Publics
Chair: Prof. Dr. Christoph Neuberger
The full expertise is downloadable at
http://www.kek-online.de/kek/information/publikation/alm-band_43.pdf
(in German)