global voices, one world

RF: Will frame the study.  Visualizes a first-generation 3D rotating map of the Chinese blogosphere.

JK: Visualizes social network diagrams of 12 different languages.  Some visual representations of languages (for Russia)–represented by concentrated, polarized areas of color–are platform-specific; others (for Arabic, Persian) are much more distributed.  

The Chinese blogosphere is a mix: it is concentrated in some areas (i.e. it is still platform-specific) but over a spread of “trading zones” (e.g. business bloggers, patriotic bloggers, bloggers based on Sohu.com or ycool.com).  Different cuts of the visualization can be via layers of traditional or simplified characters. Cluster focus index graphs show how proportionately terms are used in a given cluster relative to everyone else. The visualization also shows links and tags (e.g. tags for technology, social, news, and politics). 

Larger zones are in business and culture; interestingly, in one side are pro-state bloggers, but on the other side are overseas communities.  In the middle are critical discourse–those are the ones that get blocked.