During the German election campaign in 2005 a new network arose in the German blogosphere. Politicians, journalists as well as engaged citizens began to discuss campaigning and politics in the new medium of weblogs, giving rise to a large number of so-called "Wahlblogs". This was the first time that weblogs gained considerable momentum as a means of political communication after previous experiences on the regional level of "Landtagswahlen" (in Hamburg and NRW).

Experiences in the USA (presidential election 2004) and Great Britain (general election 2005) have shown that next to the mainstream mass media, weblogs played an important role as a source of information as well as a source of mobilization. The research project Weblogs in the German Election Campaign seeks to analyze empirically the role and the impact of weblogs in the election campaign 2005.

The aim of this project is twofold: first, the project will provide a descriptive analysis of weblog use in the 2005 election campaign in Germany. Second, we are going to draw an accurate picture of the network between those blogs, which consists of links in blogrolls, blog entries or comments. To capture the dynamics of such a network, we will use a theoretical approach focusing on communication which was developed in the research project "Communication-Oriented Modelling" (COM).

The project has four main focuses:

• Linking Practices. We will distinguish two types of networks: one that is based on the blogrolls as links between two blogs and the other that is based on links in blog entries. The major research questions are: Who links to whom? Do conservative blogs link to social democratic blogs and vice versa? Are different political camps linked to each other or can we observe a kind of "cyber-balkanization"? Which blogs act as gatekeepers?
  
  
• Classification of Blogs: Weblogs and groups of weblogs will be compared to each other quantitatively, by counting the amount of posts, comments, trackbacks etc. to distinguish different types of blogs used in the election campaign.
  
  
• Content Analysis: Blog posts are analyzed qualitatively to gain information about the sources and arguments of weblog discussions. Which kind of discourse is recorded from the mass media and which other information sources are used by weblogs? How are they referenced and discussed in the blogosphere? Which frames are developed in the process?
  
  
• Analysis of Dynamics: To compare the dynamics of weblog communication with the dynamics of the campaign in general, we analyze issue cycles on- and offline. The overall objective of this step is to evaluate and to explain the evolution and diffusion of issues in weblog communication. The communication theory of COM focuses on the visibility of issues as an indicator for their social relevance.
  
  

The project aims to grasp the total of weblogs engaging in the German election campaign 2005. Data was collected using snowball sampling techniques and web indices. Data analysis is carried out with statistical methods, content analysis and techniques of social network analysis. Weblog communication is seen as a dynamically evolving message-reference-network, as specified by the COM-approach.

Thomas Malsch (Head)
Steffen Albrecht
Maren Lübcke
Rasco Perschke
Marco Schmitt
Judith Muster
Björn Greve
Jan Hildebrandt
Klaus Stein (Bamberg University)

Other projects concerned with the use of weblogs in election campaigns:

Cross-ideological conversations among bloggers
Project by Eszter Hargittai, Jason Gallo and Sean Zehnder on the US election campaign 2004

The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election
Paper by Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance on the US election campaign 2004

(for additional references to project descriptions in German see here)