Thesis Fodder: A Geographic Content analysis

In a reasonably unscientific manner I’ve noticed what I think might be an interesting/plausible relationship in how regionalization may impact blog content. Content development, presentation and geospatial references appear to vary based on where a blogger hails from:

1. If not in the california, boston or NYC – geographic references are limited. If in these locations, location dropping is all the rage. Of course there are exceptions, that’s why I referred to it as a [tag]content analysis[/tag] and unscientific, mainly just a casual observation.

2. There may be an east coast west coast blogging style.

I’m curious if there are other styles base on geography, but due to the first casual observation in item #1 and the limited content survey (<30 blogs and <100 posts), I just haven’t seen a pattern outside of east and west. Have you?

So assuming observation #1 is a reasonable observation, then what are the east and west coast attributes which define the pattern/mode/style? While overly simplistic, the gaps appear to be in frequency and length of post. West coast bloggers appear to have fewer words in in any single post (initial data indicates potentially up to 20%), are more “linky” and more posts in a given week, while east coast bloggers appear to be more verbose and posting at a slightly lower weekly post velocity.

That being said, it appears that weekly words are really close, thats right “spitting distance”. This might be a thesis topic for some creative writing wonk on the average writing capacity of any given person. PLEASE NOTE: I’ve done none of the math to validate correlation of any of these assertions.

This is a great opportunity for some budding social geographer out there who is bored with house types, the impact of infrastructure or capitalism on the the landscape and [tag]land tenure[/tag] analysis. A virtual understanding of site, situation and place as expressed by blogged content. C’mon – it’s just math.

Four sets of data with the same correlation of 0.81

As a southern blogger, I’m almost afraid to slice the states to a more regional level, at least I’m too lazy to do the work, after all east coast/west coast worked for rappers, it will work for bloggers.

[tag]twitter[/tag] is a [tag]social geography[/tag] [tag]thesis[/tag] waiting to happen!

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  • Reply spatially relevant » Blog Archive » So media snacks? Can a meme change a model? October 27, 2007 at 5:14 am

    […] could blow my assertion of east coast v. west coast bloggers, but than again my content survey should hold up.  I […]

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