1. Characterizing political bloggers' online and offline civic involvement: Why the Quebec experience matters.
- Author
-
Raynauld, Vincent, Giasson, Thierry, and Darisse, Cynthia
- Subjects
- *
BLOGS & politics , *INVESTIGATIONS , *TREND setters , *POLITICAL sociology , *POLITICAL participation - Abstract
While many scholars have recently conducted quantitative and qualitative investigations of the structure and content of âA-listâ politically-oriented weblogs, few have focused on the civic involvement of their authors which are often defined as âopinion leadersâ. Based on data collected through a Web-based survey conducted in April 2008, this paper proposes a detailed socio-political portrait of 56 âA-listâ members of the Quebec political blogosphere. The Internet-savvy population of the Canadian province of Quebec, which is characterized by its linguistic, political and cultural specificity, constitutes a well-defined research environment enabling the production of highly-representative results. The description of Quebec-based bloggersâ involvement in content dispersion and social Web-based networks as well as their participation in offline political activities will help to produce a detailed socio-political behavioral portrayal of the influential players within the Quebec political blogosphere. Additionally, this paper draws sharp contrasts with previous studies of Canadian and U.S.-based bloggers and argues for the production of more detailed analysis considering the specificities of North American political bloggers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009