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CHAPTER 6. ANALYZING THE TALK.ABORTION NEWSGROUP 91
on the scientific community by examining the set of articles cited by the object,
and the set of articles citing the object. Similarities and disparities in the cited
and citing lists suggest various roles and positions within the scientific community
for different journals or sets of journals. For example, Rice, Borgman &
Reeves (1988) used citation analysis to demonstrate that communication journals
are heavily clustered and inbred within the sub disciplines of mass communication
and interpersonal communication, and identified a few specific journals that
provided cross-fertilization across the discipline.
Reciprocity is operationalized here in a similar fashion. Each message is analyzed
to identify two lists of other messages with which it has a relationship. Followed
messages are those that are cited by a specific post. Led messages are those that
cite a specific post. There are two mechanisms by which a message can cite or be
cited by another message. A direct citation occurs when a message is identified
by the unique message identification number within the body of the text (See 3.1
on page 53. Most newsreading software automatically includes references to the
cited post when the participants use the “reply” function of their software. Participants
frequently leave in references and text of the cited posts as a tool to build
conversational continuity. An indirect citation occurs when messages are posted
to the same thread within some fixed (arbitrary) period of time. In this study, no
distinction is made between direct and indirect citations. Cited or followed messages
are defined as those posted to the same thread during the previous three
days, and those cited directly in the message. Citing or led messages are defined
as those posted to the same thread during the subsequent three days, and those citing
the message directly. Each message was analyzed to identify those messages
it followed, and those messages it led.
To illustrate, assume that message #1010 was added to the thread “Abortion is
immoral” at 2:05 PM on September 10, 1995. Message #1010 directly cites two
messages: #505 and #675. Message #1010 indirectly cited three messages: #500,
#505 and #510. These three messages constitute the entire list of messages added
to the thread “Abortion is immoral” between 12:01 AM on September 4th and
2:04 PM on September 10. Message #1010 has a total of four unique followed
posts: #500, #505, #510, #610 (#505 appeared in both lists, and is counted only
once). A similar procedure is used to calculate the list of led posts.
Lists of followed and led messages are then summed across authors to build measures
of message reciprocity. For example, assume that author “George” contributed
100 messages to the newsgroup. George’s 100 messages followed a com-