%0 Generic %1 oai:CiteSeerPSU:613445 %A Hindman, Matthew %A Tsioutsiouliklis, Kostas %A Johnson, Judy A. %B Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association %D 2003 %K www web google searchengine society %T Googlearchy: How a Few Heavily-Linked Sites Dominate Politics on the Web %U http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/613445.html; %X Many political scientists have assumed that the World Wide Web would lower the cost of political information and reduce inequalities of attention for those outside the political mainstream. However, computer scientists have consistently reported that the aggregate structure of the Web is antiegalitarian; it seems to follow a "winners take all" power-law distribution, where a few successful sites receive the bulk of online tra#c. In an attempt to reconcile these apparently disparate conclusions, this study undertakes a large-scale survey of the political content available online. The study involves iterative crawling away from political sites easily accessible through popular online search tools, and it uses sophisticated automated methods to categorize site content. We find that, in every category we examine, a tiny handful of Websites dominate. While this may lower the cost of finding at least some high-quality information on a given political topic, it greatly limits the impact of the vast majority of political Websites.

@misc{oai:CiteSeerPSU:613445, abstract = {Many political scientists have assumed that the World Wide Web would lower the cost of political information and reduce inequalities of attention for those outside the political mainstream. However, computer scientists have consistently reported that the aggregate structure of the Web is antiegalitarian; it seems to follow a {"}winners take all{"} power-law distribution, where a few successful sites receive the bulk of online tra#c. In an attempt to reconcile these apparently disparate conclusions, this study undertakes a large-scale survey of the political content available online. The study involves iterative crawling away from political sites easily accessible through popular online search tools, and it uses sophisticated automated methods to categorize site content. We find that, in every category we examine, a tiny handful of Websites dominate. While this may lower the cost of finding at least some high-quality information on a given political topic, it greatly limits the impact of the vast majority of political Websites.}, added-at = {2006-11-06T22:19:26.000+0100}, author = {Hindman, Matthew and Tsioutsiouliklis, Kostas and Johnson, Judy A.}, bibsource = {OAI-PMH server at cs1.ist.psu.edu}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2b111eaf45735ecdc0e67d3fe63fce7d2/lysander07}, booktitle = {Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association}, interhash = {cb886ffe5bc562e3ffdc3601f258b841}, intrahash = {b111eaf45735ecdc0e67d3fe63fce7d2}, keywords = {www web google searchengine society}, language = {en}, month = {June~03}, oai = {oai:CiteSeerPSU:613445}, rights = {unrestricted}, timestamp = {2009-01-27T15:24:50.000+0100}, title = {Googlearchy: How a Few Heavily-Linked Sites Dominate Politics on the Web}, url = {http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/613445.html;}, year = 2003 }