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CHAPTER 5. MEASURING THE PUBLIC SPHERE 74
of constraints imposed on the participants. Diversity is assessed at two levels: the
overall newsgroup, and within the newsgroup.
Tractability measures the degree to which the volume or size of a public sphere
zone changes on a day to day basis. High tractability would suggest that participants
contract and expand the size of their public sphere according to their
own needs and desires. Low tractability would suggest either low needs or desires
to alter the size of the group, or external forces preventing the size from
being altered. Tractability measures the capability of a medium to expand and
contract depending on information flows. For example, the network news hole is
30 minutes, news or no news. But television networks have tractability by being
able to do special live broadcasts, or to break in to other programming with really
important news. On the other hand, network news is not contractable, so the
volume of news has a defined floor. Newsgroups, of course, expand and contract
regularly over time, without being out of the ordinary. Tractability is measured
by the number of days featuring messages outside the normal bounds of activity.
High tractability would suggest a high level of diversity. The second aspect of
diversity measures the presence of multiple conversational patterns within threads
of messages. These patterns are measured by the number of messages within a
thread, the spread of days associated with the thread’s existence, the number of
days on which messages were posted, and the number and type of authors posting
messages. Diverse patterns would suggest that participants take advantage of
their ability to shape the nature of their conversations; a lack of diversity would
suggest either low desire, or external forces preventing participants from shaping
their conversations.
Reciprocity refers to the notion that people are engaged in conversation with each
other, and that their messages are reflected upon and discussed by others. A message
is considered reciprocal to a previous message if it appears in the same thread
within seven days of the previous message, or if it cites the message directly by
message identification number. Authors are considered to have a reciprocal relationship
if their messages are reciprocated. The primary indicators of reciprocity
are based on authors, and measured in terms of messages and other authors. In
the idealized public sphere, reciprocity would be maximized: that is, each author
would establish a reciprocal relationship with every other author. Reciprocity is
operationalized as the proportion of authors with whom a reciprocal relationship
is established, and the number of authors which the average message reciprocates.
The final dimension concerns quality. Quality in the informal zone of the public