Countering the Social Ignorance of ‘Social’ Network Analysis and Data Mining with Ethnography A Case Study of the Singapore Blogosphere Steven Eunan McDermott Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds Institute of Communications Studies November, 2013 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2013 The University of Leeds and Steven Eunan McDermott The right of Steven Eunan McDermott to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. -ii- Acknowledgements For my Da, who talked with me as an adult from a young age - discussing the news, current affairs and documentaries. For my Mammy, who showed me how to stand on my own two feet and how to ride a bike. Since then I have known the direction to go in. I am very grateful for all the support and assistance that I have received over the years while writing this thesis. From the conference in 2006 at the Institute of Communications Studies, after which I knew where I had to be, to the scholarship I received from ICS - I am forever grateful. I am thankful too for the warm welcome I received from The Communication Networks on the Web Conference, in December 2008 at the University of Amsterdam funded by the European Science Foundation. I felt part of something bigger. A massive ‘thank you’ to Allison Cavanagh and Stephen Lax for being my supervisors and guiding me patiently and gently in the right direction over the years. The contributions made by Nick Crossley, Robin Brown and Stephen Coleman should be acknowledged. The thesis improved immensely because of their feedback and of course, all errors are mine alone. I also want to thank the Centre of Digital Citizenship and especially those members who took the time and effort to read an extract from this thesis. To all of my friends in the PhD room – an honour to know each and every one of you - as we struggled together and managed to laugh, especially Agnes, Alina, Sarah, Kheira, Molly and Fabro to name only a few and in no particular order. Throughout the years of writing this, I have received a lot of support and understanding from Dr Dharma and Linda Suhardja. A big thank you to Sophie who by her very existence generated the impetus to complete it. Finally, it needs to be understood by all who read this that none of it would be possible without Imelda. She has pushed and pulled me through this thesis. Most importantly of all - she understands. -iii- Abstract This thesis questions on one level the assertion that the Internet is a force for democratisation in authoritarian regimes (Habermas, 2006), and at the same time another means for disseminating propaganda, fear and intimidation (Rodan, 1998). It overcomes the limitations of using automated data collection and analysis of blogs by supplementing these techniques with a prolonged period of participant observation and a detailed reading of the textual extracts in order to allow for meaning to emerge. It analyses the discourses and styles of discourse of the Singapore political blogosphere. Hurst (2006) and Lin and Sundaram et al., (2007) described the same blogosphere as isolated from the global blogosphere and clearly demarcated with no central topic. Countering the social ignorance of such automated data collection and analysis techniques, this study assigns meaning to data gathered from January 2009 to February 2010. This case study will help highlight the analytic framework, benefits and limitations of using social network analysis and an anthropological approach to networks. It has targeted blogs using hyperlink network analysis and measured ‘importance’ with ‘betweenness centrality’ (de Nooy & Mrvar et al., 2005) in order to demarcate the boundaries of the sample of blogs that are archived for semantic and discourse analysis. Beyond a brief introduction to betweenness centrality, and the merits or otherwise, of combining various ranking of blogs such as Google’s PageRank, Hits and Blogrank algorithms it avoids the algorithm fetishism within hyperlink data collection and linguistic analysis of corpus collected from blogs; allowing for culture, identity and agency. It assesses which of White’s (2009) three disciplines and relative valuation orders the Singapore blogosphere adheres. The contention raised here is that social network analysis, or rather those elements within it that are focused exclusively on algorithms, are in danger of co-option by states and multinational corporations (Wolfe, 2010:3) unless they acknowledge sociocultural forces. The tools of social network analysis and data mining are moved beyond mere description, while avoiding prescription – and at the same time advancing its contribution to substantive theoretical questions (Scott, 2010). Ensuring space for agency in a field dominated by sociograms, statistics and algorithms with theory that places persons lacking recognition at its centre is important to this thesis. Focusing only on the relational aspects of the interaction and in the individual persons linked (Wolfe, 2010: 3) creates a limited representation of the wider phenomena under study and a narrow awareness of the context in which these networks exist. A people -iv- governed by one political party since 1963 (The People’s Action Party) with the government of Singapore is the focus of this case study. This paper also highlights the use of various software technology; blogs, IssueCrawler, HTTrack, NetDraw, and Leximancer while using an ethnographic approach to counter the social ignorance of automated electronic software. The analysis of the Singaporean blogosphere from 2009 to 2010 provides a descriptive analysis of the argument that the non-democratic nature of Singapore society shapes the development of online public spheres. -v- Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... ii Abstract ..................................................................................................................... iii Contents ..................................................................................................................... v Figures ..................................................................................................................... viii Tables ...................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2 The Internet, Media and Politics ........................................................... 9 2.1 Media Systems and Political Systems .......................................................... 9 2.2 Studies of Communications under Authoritative Regimes ........................ 18 2.3 Studies of the Internet in Comparative Contexts – Authoritative versus Democratic ................................................................................... 28 2.3.1 The Internet as the ‘Cause’ of the Polarisation of Political Opinion ............................................................................................ 33 2.3.2 The Internet ‘Helping’ the Spread of Democracy .......................... 35 2.3.3. Mobilisation and effects of online campaigning on voters ........... 38 2.4 The Uses and Limitations of ‘Network’ Ethnography ............................... 46 2.5 The development of Social Network Analysis from anthropological to sociological approaches ...................................................................... 50 2.5.1. The Sociometric Analysts ............................................................. 51 2.5.2. The Manchester Approach of the 1960’s ...................................... 54 2.5.2. Harrison C. White and Associates ................................................ 56 2.5.3. Mische’s Historical Account of the Development of Social Network Analysis ........................................................................... 57 2.6. Relational Realism or Relational Critical Realism?.................................. 62 2.7. Applications of relational analysis to the Internet..................................... 64 2.7.1. Structural Approaches to Hyperlinks resulting in Downwards Conflation ....................................................................................... 66 2.7.2. Individual Approaches to Hyperlinks resulting in Upwards Conflation ....................................................................................... 67 2.8. Virtual ethnography – development from Hines onwards ........................ 67 2.9. Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis ........... 69 Chapter 3 Missing Ethnographic Accounts of Large-scale Communication Networks ............................................................................. 72 3.1. An Approach to Network Analysis ......................................................... 72 3.1.1 Conceptualisation and Operationalization of White’s Three Disciplines and Relative Valuation Orders .................................... 78 -vi- 3.2. Singapore Blogosphere and Media Policy .............................................. 87