VERSITET

Niels Brügger

AARHUSUNIVERSITy 4 December 2014

UNI      

Status update: National web spheres within the European Union

AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

The idea›How to analyse a national web and its historical development, based on studies of material in national web archives?

›Can we make a trans-national set-up, using the same analytical design (wholly or partly)?

›National ‘Web Trend Indexes’ => European ‘Web Trend Index’, showing developments of the European web

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

Status›The Danish project ‘Probing a Nation's Web Domain — the Historical Development of the Danish Web’, had our first meeting some weeks ago

›first task: how to establish a corpus with only one version of each web entity?

›second task: to get more funding›hopefully we can share our experiences in 2015›BUDDAH also aims at analysing the historical development of a national web

›We have not tried to coordinate things yet

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

The Danish case: An outline of an analytical designA gross list of possible 'probes':›Size — Bytes›Space — Geolocation›Structure — Networks of hyperlinks›Liveliness — Domain names and updating›Content — Closedness, file and software types, language, textual elements on webpage, and semantics

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: Size — Bytes›How small/big is a nation’s web sphere?›The size of different file types and of file types in general

›How big/small are websites?

›Netarkivet’s snapshot, 2006:›85% are smaller than 10MB›less than 1% are bigger than 500MB

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: Space — Geolocation›Where are websites located?

›Search the text for geographic references, e.g. postcodes

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: Networks/hyperlinksWebsite internal/external hyperlinks

›Are websites closed or open towards the web?›How flat/deep are websites?

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: Networks/hyperlinksWeb sphere internal/external hyperlinks

Mapping the hyperlink network of the web sphere:›centrality based on in-degree

The possible inconsistency of hyperlinks challenge these types of analyses.

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: Networks/hyperlinksWeb sphere internal/external hyperlinks

Mapping the hyperlinks pointing out of the web sphere:›How well-linked is the national web sphere to the rest of the web?›Which other domain names are the most linked-to?

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: LivelinessHow lively is a nation’s web sphere?

›Domain names: number of new/inactive/disappeared domain names›Updating: number of websites having been changed since last snapshot

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: ContentContent: What is actually to be found on the webpages?

›Closedness›File and software types›Language›Textual elements on webpage›Semantics

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: ContentClosedness

How many websites are password protected?

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: ContentFile and software types

›Which file types are the most prevalent?›Which software types are the most widespread?

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: ContentLanguage

›Does the national language prevail? — or do regional languages? — or foreign languages?

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: ContentTextual elements on webpage

›Background color›Most used fonts›Length of webpages ›Placing of menu items (left align, vertical, or top align, horizontal)

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AARHUSUNIVERSITy

Discussion: possible new activitiesNiels Brügger

4 December 2014

An outline of an analytical design: ContentSemantics

Word based analyses can tell us about:›word frequencies›where specific issues or topics are to be found, and how they spread

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