Weblogs and Blogosphere: The Social Networks Approach

Jan M. Zając, Kamil Rakocy

English version of the article

With the rapid growth of blogs popularity over last few years, the blogosphere is nowadays a lively social space and its impact on various areas of life, such as marketing, public relations, journalism or politics, cannot be neglected. In order to investigate the importance and role of weblogs in processes of diffusion of information and social influence, they should be analyzed in the context of hyperlinks connecting various weblogs and other web pages. The structural analysis enables understanding the specifics of blogosphere and social processes taking part there. Social networks analysis is a useful method to reach such objectives.

KEYWORDS

weblogs, blogosphere, social networks analysis, network dynamics, hyperlinks networks, diffusion of information