Expanding the Public Sphere through Computer ... - ResearchGate

CHAPTER 6. ANALYZING THE TALK.ABORTION NEWSGROUP 77
Table 6.1: Summary of Activity in Usenet Newsgroup talk.abortion, April 1994 –
March 1995
Measure Total Daily Daily
Mean Median
Available Available
Messages 45,729 905 775
Authors Writing Messages 2,989 156 152
Threads with Messages 8,479 242 217
By comparison with other Usenet groups, talk.abortion is among the busiest: In
January, 1995, for example, talk.abortion ranked 19th among the newsgroups in
terms of number of messages posted per month(Reid 1994a); previous usage reports
showed the group to be ranked within the top 25 newsgroups, in terms
of messages posted per month, throughout the study period. A similar ranking
(Reid 1994c, Reid 1994b). 2
There are, to be sure, variations in the number of messages, authors and threads
on a day-to-day basis. Figure 6.2 on page 79 illustrates the range of messages
available and authors contributing during the study period. The activity in the
newsgroup peaked on Day 10 of the study, with 411 messages posted in a single
day. Including the six days preceding, there were 2,443 messages available that
day. Other peaks in messaging behavior occurred periodically throughout the
study.
One possible explanation for the peaks and valleys of activity on the talk.abortion
newsgroup would be an interaction with real-world events. To test this explanation,
an index of the number of newspaper articles mentioning the word “abortion”
was compiled for the year. 3 A comparison of the number of messages available
particularly disk-intensive groups (for example, those transmitting binary files), and lengthening
it for others.
2 Comparative data on the number of authors and number of threads of other groups is not, to
the best of my knowledge, available. In part, the analysis presented here is intended to demonstrate
the value of such data.
3 The index tallies the total number of articles with the word “abortion” appearing in the
the Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune,
Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, USA Today, Atlanta Journal &
Constitution, Christian Science Monitor and Cleveland Plain Dealer. A moving average of the
previous seven days was calculated to match the measure of messages available in the newsgroup.