State of the blogosphere report 2009

Technorati has released its "State of the blogosphere" report over five segments. Surveying bloogers since 2004, this study documents who is blogging, their motivations to blog (personal satisfaction is rated as one of the primary reasons to blog), and how bloggers go about blogging for a living with respect to parameters such as frequency of updates, ans posts per unit time. Pertinent here is the fact that  when rating blogging frequency by Technorati Authority (a measure for how authoritative the blog/blogger is as determined by Technorati), high authority bloggers posted nearly 300 times more than lower ranked bloggers. This report also discusses revenure generation and monetization activities in detail. Understanding these findings can go a long way toward unbderstanding the political impact of discursive practices such as blogging and microblogging.


Check out this report here. 

The institutionalization of student blogs

Professor K sent me a very interesting link to an article in the NYT that talks about how universities are incorporating student blogs in their efforts to offer prospective applicants insights into life on campus. In this article Cristen Chinea talks about her blog which discusses her life as a student at M.I.T. What is really interesting is that blogs by students like Cristen are displayed prominently displayed on M.I.T.'s admissions page. The bloggers themselves are inundated with queries and responses from prospective applicants and are free to offer opinion and respond without fear of censorship from the institution. What's more, the students are actually paid to participate in this collaborative venture! What I found really interesting is that M.I.T. refuses to pull down posts that offer criticism of the university or the facilities offered on campus. The fact that M.I.T. chooses to blaze a new trail in bringing outsiders and students in touch on a university sponsored forum represents to me the generative power of social media. This is a great example of how social media can be utilized by institutions in a manner that respects the agency of the individual. How long before other schools including Purdue follow suit with this idea?

Talking about health behavior

I read an interesting article last week that I can't really get out of my head. In this article, economist Dave Leonhart talks about how there might be good reason to shift the debate around health care reform from the institutions that are responsible for the provision of health care to the individuals who receive it. In his article, he interviews Dr. Delos M. Cosgrove, the chief executive of the Cleveland Clinic which enforces a policy of not hiring smokers. Dr. Cosgrove suggests that obesity is the biggest health problem that America is facing today and says that if he had his way he would not hire obese people either. His rationale behind this controversial statement is that behavior is the biggest contributor to early deaths. I am not quite sure what is meant by the term 'early deaths' but one would think early deaths refer to deaths that occur before a person had reached the average life expectancy for the demographic group or nation that he/she is a part of. The key to ensuring good health it seems would lie in engaging in behavior that is either healthy or not damaging to health. This topic is interesting to me not so much for the provocative argument that is set forth in it (viz., that obesity ia result of choices people make and people should be taxed for the unhealthy behavioral choices they make). Rather, it suggests to me an avenue to realize the potential for groups at the institutional or interpersonal level to influence behavior. The internet and social media could be especially useful in exercising this influence. For example, I know of quitnet.com an online community that provides resources, advice from counselors, and, social support to individuals who wish to quit smoking. Perhaps, the thing to realize is that while individuals are responsible in behavior, behavior is not simply the product of agency (= free will) but is in fact embedded in structures.