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CHAPTER 6. ANALYZING THE TALK.ABORTION NEWSGROUP 93
Lists of followed and led messages also provide the basis for measures of author
reciprocity. Author reciprocity is calculated on the basis of unique authors of followed
and led messages. For example, continuing with the example from above,
assume that the 1,000 followed messages were written by 400 different authors,
and that the 1,200 led messages were written by 300 different authors. The author
follow ratio would now be calculated as 400 : 100 or 4:00, the author led ratio as
300 : 100 or 3:00; and the author difference ratio is 4 : 3or 1:33. In addition,
the lists of followed and led authors can be combined and then sorted into three
categories: reciprocated authors are those appearing on both the list of followed
and led authors; followed authors are those appearing only on the list of followed
authors, and led authors appear only on the list of led authors. The relationships
between these three measures provides additional estimates of an individual author’s
reciprocity.
Author reciprocity scores for groups of authors are provided in Table 6.8 on the
following page. Not surprisingly, those authors writing more messages tend, on
average, to follow, reciprocate and lead more authors than those writing fewer
messages. However, when the ratios of authors followed, reciprocated and led
are examined, the same pattern emerges as was found with message reciprocity.
Authors in the groups of more frequent authors tend to follow, reciprocate and lead
fewer authors per message contributed than those in the groups of less frequent
authors.
Message reciprocity and author reciprocity provide estimates of the amount of
interaction between authors. Every message posted to the newsgroup may have
followed other messages – either by citing the message ID number or adding to an
existing thread. Every message posted to the newsgroup may have led other messages,
indicated by having its message ID number cited in a subsequent message,
or having subsequent messages added to the thread. Each author is then described
in terms of message and author reciprocity. Message reciprocity measures the
number of messages that that author’s contributions followed, and the number of
messages that that author’s contributions led. The average message posted by
very frequent, frequent and occasional authors – who account for almost 80% of
the messages in the newsgroup (See Table 6.2 on page 85) – followed about six
messages, and led about six messages. Authors in these groups tended to lead
as many messages as they followed. The average message posted by infrequent,
very infrequent, two-time and one-time authors, on the other hand, followed and
led more than twice as many messages as those posted by the more frequent authors.
These authors posted messages which were, on average, more likely to lead