Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
The Evolution of the HIV/AIDS NGO Hyperlink Network
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
Web data as academic and business quality estimates: A comparison of three data sources
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Interlocking Directorates and Profitability: A Social Network Analysis of Fortune 500 Companies
ASONAM '12 Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2012)
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Politicians' Web sites have been considered a medium for organizing, mobilizing, and agenda-setting, but extant literature lacks a systematic approach to interpret the Web sites of senators—a new medium for political communication. This study classifies the role of political Web sites into relational (hyperlinking) and topical (shared-issues) aspects. The two aspects may be viewed from a social embeddedness perspective and three facets, as K. Foot and S. Schneider ([2002]) suggested. This study employed network analysis, a set of research procedures for identifying structures in social systems, as the basis of the relations among the system's components rather than the attributes of individuals. Hyperlink and issue data were gathered from the United States Senate Web site and Yahoo. Major findings include: (a) The hyperlinks are more targeted at Democratic senators than at Republicans and are a means of communication for senators and users; (b) the issue network found from the Web is used for discussing public agendas and is more highly utilized by Republican senators; (c) the hyperlink and issue networks are correlated; and (d) social relationships and issue ecologies can be effectively detected by these two networks. The need for further research is addressed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.