Expanding the Public Sphere through Computer ... - ResearchGate

CHAPTER 6. ANALYZING THE TALK.ABORTION NEWSGROUP 90
Table 6.6: Messages, Authors, Days and Spread of Threads by Decile
Thread Mean Mean Mean Mean
Decile Messages Authors Days Spread
1 227.70 50.60 41.60 117.45
2 109.07 27.81 26.05 96.07
3 52.75 16.86 17.03 52.38
4 30.78 12.28 12.16 45.68
5 16.43 7.78 8.06 31.34
6 9.64 5.58 5.60 25.72
7 5.76 3.77 3.82 18.00
8 3.39 2.62 2.54 11.56
9 2.00 1.79 1.71 5.37
10 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.00
threads feature a single author posting on a single day, with a spread of zero days.
Focusing on the top five deciles, representing half of the messages posted to the
newsgroup, there is a clear relationship among the number of messages and the
number of authors, days and spread of a thread. In summary, the more messages
in a thread, the more authors, number of days and spread of days. There does
not appear to be any differentiation among the number of authors, days or spread
associated with the number of messages in a thread.
6.2 Message and Author Reciprocity
This section examines the measure of reciprocity among authors in the newsgroup.
As discussed in Section 2.4 on page 31, reciprocity refers to the opportunities
to gain knowledge of the perspectives of others, and the degree to which
these opportunities are realized. The aspect of reciprocity that is measured here
is equally focused on both halves of the definition, that is, both the opportunity
and the realization portion. The measure of reciprocity to be used here is drawn
from the tradition of citation analysis or bibliometric studies (Rice, Borgman &
Reeves 1988, So 1988, Garfield 1979), which suggests that journal citations are
good indicators of communication within groups of scholars. Citation analyses
measures the role and impact of a particular journal, article or author (the object)