Finding communities: alternative viewpoints through weblogs and tagging
| Date | 25 July 2008 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410810884075 |
| Pages | 552-575 |
| Published date | 25 July 2008 |
| Author | Kimberly Chopin |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Finding communities: alternative
viewpoints through weblogs and
tagging
Kimberly Chopin
Virum, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to discuss and test the claim that user-based tagging allows for access to
a wider variety of viewpoints than is found using other forms of online searching.
Design/methodology/approach – A general overview of the nature of weblogs and user-based
tagging is given, along with other relevant concepts. A case is then analyzed where viewpoints
towards a specific issue are searched for using both tag searching (Technorati) and general search
engine searching (Google and Google Blog Search).
Findings – The claim to greater accessibility through user-based tagging is not overtly supported
with these experiments. Further results for both general and tag-specific searching goes against some
common assumptions about the types of content found on weblogs as opposed to more general web
sites.
Research limitations/implications – User-based tagging is still not widespread enough to give
conclusive data for analysis. As this changes, further research in this area, using a variety of search
subjects, is warranted.
Originality/value – Although proponents of user-based tagging attribute many qualities to the
practice, these qualities have not been properly documented or demonstrated. This paper partially
rectifies this gap by testing one of the claims made, that of accessibility to alternate views, thus adding
to the discussion on tagging for both researchers and other interested parties.
Keywords Communities,Communication technologies, Information searches,Internet,
Online operations,Classification schemes
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
This thinker observed that all the books, no matter how diverse they might be, are made up of
the same elements: the space, the period, the comma, the twenty-two letters of the alphabet.
He also alleged a fact that travelers have confirmed: in the vast library there are no two
identical books. From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the library is total
and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical
symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite) ...(Borges, 1962).
Jorge Luis Borge’s library of Babel, a place of innumerable hexagonal rooms with
seemingly infinite numbers of books, containing every permutation of random
characters, has been regularly viewed as a prefiguring metaphor for the internet (for
example, by Leonard, 2004). This implies a view of the internet as also containing all
possible permutations, not of characters, but of information. This view applies equally
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
The author wishes to thank James Medhurst for useful discussion on both the blogosphere and
the case issue. Additional thanks go to the anonymous reviewers for extremely useful feedback.
JDOC
64,4
552
Received 20 October 2006
Revised 16 August 2007
Accepted 2 September 2007
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 64 No. 4, 2008
pp. 552-575
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/00220410810884075
well to just the worldwide web (or simply the web), which is commonly viewed as
connecting all these permutations of information together into one vast network of
hyperlinks, an electronic universal library (as explored by Kruk, 1999). But what does it
mean in real terms to have all information connected together and available from one
source? To Kruk, this type of universal library would entail having even “materials
blatantly untrue,false or distorted”. Leonard (2004) imagines a future wherethe internet
will have every book, but also “every critique of every book, every alternative history,
every conspiracy theory, and all the real facts and fake facts to back every story up”.
These are both visions of the future, but to the layman, this vision also fits our present
understandingof the internet in general and the webin particular. In surfing the web, we
expect to get complete, though not necessarily authoritative, information on anysubject.
Increasingly, we also expect to hear from every interest group and point of view related
to that subject.So, in the words of Holderness (1997), “a searchfor ‘East Timor’ should, in
principle, produce the official Indonesian government position right next to an
anti-occupation perspective right next to all the newspaper articles”. It should
additionally produce the views of all participants, from victims and beneficiaries, to
politicians and diplomats, from both outsiders and insiders.
With all of this information potentially available, how can that which is relevant to
an individual’s information needs be sorted out? Into his library of Babel, Borges places
librarians, whose lives are spent in search for true information, the ultimate catalog of
all the rest of the library. The chances of these librarians finding that which they seek
is infinitesimal. On the web, the librarians of choice are the search engines. Users have
more faith in search engines finding a relevant truth than Borges has in his fictional
librarians doing the same; however, the problem of access is still a factor in online
searching. This despite the fact that the typical query in Google will retrieve some (or
even a lot of) relevant information. The problem that remains is the type of information
retrieved. In Borgesian terms, if finding one relevant item is statistically impossible,
the chances for finding two alternate views of the same relevant item is even less than
that. Once, again, search engines are assumed to be better at presenting some of the
range of searchable information. Other, more recent forms of indexing, particularly
based on metadata and user-based tagging are claimed (for example, by Kroski, 2005)
to be particularly useful in retrieving a range of viewpoints. But to what extent is this
claim justified? This is the question that will be explored in the present paper.
Rather than explore the web as a whole, this project will focus on the area of
weblogs (commonly called blogs), chosen due to their status as a sub-world within the
larger world of the web. Just as the web can be presumed to contain knowledge about
all subjects, so are blogs assumed (for example, by Blood, 2000) to cover more and more
subject areas as more and more people take up the practice of blogging. Added to this
is a community aspect to blogging that should make it possible to search for, not just
opinions, but also communities, the multitude of roles played by those involved in any
given issue or subject. The ability to find alternative views from the network of blogs
with user-based tagging will be explored, both on a conceptual level, but also by using
a small case study, in order to compare such tagging with more customary free-text
searching. The issue of possible connections between childhood vaccines containing
mercury and the onset of autism in vaccine age children has been chosen as the specific
case to be analyzed, as a good exemplification of the issues involved with testing for
alternative views.
Finding
communities
553
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