The Blog Network in America: Blogs as Indicators of Relationships among US Cities

An analysis of links among U.S. weblogs is done to examine the interpersonal social network and social connections among U.S. cities. Drawing 4,241 weblogs from the NITLE census dataset that are identified as being located in the United States, this project extracts the outward links of these weblogs and uses them to analyze the relationship between cities. A total of 632 U.S. city/region units, represented by the first three-digits of US postal codes, are taken as nodes of the network. In total, 41,212 permanent links from blogs of each of the city units are counted as weighted arcs in the network. Inlinks and outlinks of each city unit are recorded for analysis. The study finds that the city units whose bloggers attract most inlinks are Manhattan, San Francisco and Bay Area, Washington, D.C. and its western suburbs, Boston and its suburbs, Los Angeles and Seattle. The study discovers a super-metropolitan cluster, transcending geographical boundaries, within which the cities traditionally associated with cultural elites are closely connected. For other less metropolitan areas, blogs are most heavily connected at a geographically local level, and then extend to a national network.