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TransplantBuddies.org Forums » Buddies Blogs » How has this forum helped you as a recipient, donor, or family member? » Co-link analysis... what's that? « Previous Next »
Author Message
JRA
Member
Username: Researcher

Post Number: 14
Registered: 11-2010
Posted on Monday, November 22, 2010 - 08:21 am:   Edit Post Delete Post Print Post

Apart from the survey that I'm conducting, I am also looking at how different spectrums of the transplant community are linked together on the web. To do this, I am using a technique called "co-link analysis." Co-link analysis operates on the assumption that for any important issue on the web, there is a hierarchy of linking techniques that reflect some guiding principles of the organizations that employ them. This is especially true for well-established issues that have settled into a relative stable configuration of actors. Looking at how the .gov, .org, .net, and .com domains are arranged and which sites display institutional affinity for each other can help us better understand the overall issues.

Below I have posted several graphs showing rough depictions of linking strategies of A) Message board communities like LDO, B) Transplant centers, C) Coordinating and support institutes and finally, D) The overall network of major actors.

Please keep in mind that these graphs still need to be refined and that the final images will likely look quite different.

A few notes on how to interpret these graphs.

1) Tighter dot clusters are a sign of tighter institutional affiliation.
2) The list of top actors on the right is the list as seen by the central node of the network (the graphs I'm making are interactive and the list on the right changes according to which node you have selected, here however, it is a jpg and is not interactive).
3) Actors are ranked according to incoming links rather than by outgoing links or by a combination of both.
4) Looking at the .gov (red), .org (green), .com (blue), and .net (dark green) layout can give clues as to who is in control of the issue network and how government, civil society, and the private organizations cooperate with each other.
5) Please disregard get.adobe.com, and similar sites ;-) For some reason, They continue to defy my filters.
6) These charts depict networks and linking strategies among a defined set of actors. Node centrality or size has no ultimate bearing on how popular a site is. If you don't see sites like TB on the graph, please don't be concerned, Google rankings tell a very different story.
7) As the overall theme of my research is "community empowerment," I expect that my results (for this portion of the study at least) will show that message boards like TB are important mainly because they are open and discursive communities that, while they try to cooperate with other organizations and institutes, still have enough organizational distance to reflect critically on systemic problems and to host a wide range of views.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me directly or to post a reply in the forum.

Message Board Network:

https://idisk.mac.com/fyuzebox//Public/Board.jpg

Transplant Center Network:

https://idisk.mac.com/fyuzebox//Public/Center.jpg

Coordinating and Support Network:

https://idisk.mac.com/fyuzebox//Public/Beauro.jpg

Total Network:

https://idisk.mac.com/fyuzebox//Public/Total.jpg

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