Digital Methods by Richard Rogers

Author:Richard Rogers [Rogers, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780262018838
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2013-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 6.1

Alexa toolbar installation and registration process, with field for user’s postal code, August 2011. © 2012, Alexa Internet (www.alexa.com).

Crowd-sourced sites such as the best-known Iranian example (Balatarin) and its emulators (Donbaleh and Sabzlink) require registration before the user may suggest a link, which is then voted upon by other registered users. Those URLs with the most votes rise to the top. For this exercise approximately 1,100 different hosts from Balatarin, 2,850 from Donbaleh, and 2,750 from Sabzlink were collected.24 In the following analyses Donbaleh and Sabzlink are grouped, for they share the device culture (crowd-sourcing). Together they resulted in 4,579 unique hosts. The other platform, Balatarin, is treated separately because of its status as highly significant Iranian website. Launched in 2006, Balatarin is considered the first Web 2.0 site in Persian, and has been recognized as one of the most popular Persian websites in 2007 and 2008; it also has been pivotal for the green movement in the opposition before and after the Iranian presidential elections in 2009.25 The recognition of Balatarin as a platform for the opposition also provides the opportunity to employ it as a barometer in studying the continuing strength, clarity, and volume of that voice. Do the websites that are recommended on Balatarin continue to express themselves critically, or have they discontinued the use of language critical of the regime? By strength of voice is meant whether they continue to use certain critical words. Clarity is thought of as words that are fiery and side-taking rather than coded (which are the categories of the words we study). And volume is whether there are more and more voices using the words. Is the chorus (so to speak) growing louder?

The introduction of the “Like” button and other social counters in social media has brought with it what one may term the “like economy,” which values content based on social button activity.26 Likekhor, as the name suggests, ranks websites by likes; the likes are tallied from Google Reader users who have registered with Likekhor. Google Reader, or Gooder (as some Iranian users call it), is of particular interest because through it one has been able to read the contents of websites that are otherwise filtered by the state. Google Reader thus effectively acts as a proxy to access filtered websites. At Likekhor the focus is on blogs, pointing up a relationship between Google Reader users and bloggers, or blog readers. From Likekhor we extracted a list of 2,600 hosts, which are collected from a page where all blogs on Likekhor are listed.

Thus, in July 2011 over 10,000 unique hosts were collected through platforms and devices significant to Iranian users (Google Reader, Google Web Search, and the crowd-sourcing platforms) and two that provide ranked lists of Iranian or Persian-speaking sites (Alexa and Google Ad Planner) on the basis of data collected from users located in Iran (Alexa) or from Persian-writing users (Google Ad Planner). These Iranian webs are subsequently characterized individually as well as collectively. I have chosen not to triangulate them, for very few websites recur across them.

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