No place for news in social network web sites：没有在社会网络网站新闻的地方.doc

PAGE 2No place for news in social network web sites? Mike Thelwall, (2008) No place for news in social network web sites?, Online Information Review, Vol. 32 Iss: 6, pp.726 – 744.Mike ThelwallStatistical Cybermetrics Research Group, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wolverhampton, Tel: +44 1902 321470 Fax: +44 1902 321478Abstract Purpose To assess the extent to which the news is discussed in social network web sites.Design/methodology/approach This article reports a quantitative analysis of the text of 26,953 Live Spaces from September 2006 to February 2007 using a heuristic designed to detect news discussions. In addition, a comparative link and page analysis of 20 general popular social network environments (e.g., MySpace, Facebook) and 11 popular blog environments (e.g., Typepad, Blogger) is presented.Findings The text analysis suggests that news plays little role in most Live Spaces, but the link and page analysis suggest that the key difference is less between social network environments and blog environments than between free standardised environments (e.g., MySpace, Blogger) and professional or semi-professional blogs, with the former tending to carry relatively little news-related content.Research limitations The methods used are exploratory rather than giving definitive conclusions.Practical implications Those interested in public reactions to the news should focus on blogs and blog-like social network sites rather than general social network sites, and should expect only a tiny proportion of the discussions to be news-related.Originality/value Although the role of blogs in reporting, discussing, and making the news has been frequently analysed, this is the first study about the extent to which general social networking sites engage with (mass media) news. IntroductionBlogs, web sites containing a series of dated postings in reverse chronological order, are now recognised as being sometimes influential in politics and the news