1. Issues in Blogmetrics Alastair G Smith School of Information Management Victoria University of Wellington

2. Weblogs: “blogs” Individuals comment on events and issues Act as “information hubs” Sites such as Blogger and LiveJournal make it easy for non-technical people to maintain blogs A form of communication worthy of bibliometric investigation?

3. Research questions Do terms used in blogs reflect content? Are research oriented topics reflected in blog traffic? Can national differences be tracked?

4. BlogPulse Trend Search Tool Specialised search engine for blogs Trend Search provides graphs for use of terms over time Can compare up to three searches Can examine specific blog postings that gave rise to hits

5. Trends in popular culture Trends in popular culture can be tracked, particularly if described by unique terms E.g. “Ms Dewey”

6. Changes in awareness of language Use of the term “niqab” increases as a result of controversy over veiled Moslem women

7. Searches are for terms, not concepts National differences in language Occurrence of term not necessarily an indication that it is the topic of the blogging

8. Scientific controversies Potential tool for evaluating impact of science on society

9. Impact of spam Spammers set up blogs with random phrases to attract hits Can pollute results

10. Tracking national differences Blogs not attached to country domain name Use of country name in blog misleading CountryBlog originTourist account Blogger is expatriate Incidental mention Country is topic Britain 2--71 New Zealand 21171 United States 9---1

11. Conclusions Blogs are a significant communication medium Conclusions need to be drawn with care  Use of terms does not necessarily imply discussion of concepts  Spam a problem Development of research blogs: need for a “BlogScholar” search engine?