gatewatching

Tonight’s 7.30 Report story about the disproportionate impact of high fuel prices in the Torres Strait was excellent. While a lot of the coverage of rising energy prices has concentrated on impacts on metropolitan commuters, and the he-said she-said antics of Governments and Oppositions on who’s to blame, this showed us how much is at [...]

Today’s Crikey carries a story about the NAB (or rather a PR firm representing them, Cox&Inall) spamming Australian blogs with promotional comments. Rather than impotence treatments or naughty pictures, this spam (posted on sports blogs) was inviting blog readers to enter a promotion being run for the bank. The story is behind the Crikey paywall, [...]

Along with his fellow pseph bloggers, Possum Comitatus made a big splash during the Federal Election campaign, and he now has a loyal, politically literate readership. Now he’s giving some more back to the Australian blogosphere.
On the weekend, he launched a companion site for his blog, the Possum Box, that he’s thrown open as a [...]

In this second part, we’ll follow on from our discussion of key themes in The Other Cheek, Larvatus Prodeo, and Club Troppo by looking at the concept maps which Leximancer produces. But first, a recap of the background for this study: I’ve already posted about our work in developing a new methodology for mapping link [...]

In a previous post, I mentioned our work in developing a new methodology for mapping link and concept networks in the Australian blogosphere. For a first test run of this project, we archived posts in some 300-400 Australian political blogs between the start of November 2007 (the last month of the federal election campaign) and [...]

Because we’re always keen to support other researchers, I’m re-posting this call out for research participants from an Honours student down the road at UQ. It looks like a research project on the relationship between bloggers and their readership - interesting stuff. Put the word out if possible.
Do you have a favourite blogger that [...]

Alcopops, petrol tax holidays, who leaked emails from whom… Sometimes its difficult to get serious policy discussion in the MSM (unless, like me, you’re a Fin junkie).
The best way to find out about major policy developments that impact on your areas of concern is through your RSS reader. I thought I’d try to start sharing [...]

It’s good to get offline for a while now and then. Last night I went to the Belgian Beer Cafe in Brisbane with some colleagues and friends. The mussels were lovely (as was the beer), but as well as getting some nourishment and giving my eyes a rest I got to hear about an interesting [...]

(Crossposted from snurb.info.)
The last months have been enormously productive (and, at times, exhausting!) for me. In addition to my own book Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, I’ve also contributed to a number of other publications - and quite a few of them are now finally available in print and/or online.

In [...]

Before, during and after the last Federal Election, psephological bloggers put MSM noses out of joint. They also demonstrated the value of alternative online sources of political information to a lot of people for the first time. Although some blogs like Poll Bludger, Possum’s Pollytics, Simon Jackman and Mumble had actually been around for [...]