TRIPLE HELIX noms.pmd

P-043Webometrics analysis of public voices in Nanotechnology Websites: A Triple-Helix ApproachExtended AbstractHan Woo PARK, YeungNam University, South KoreaThere is a burgeoning interest among social scientists in accordance with the diffusion of nanotechnology in a society. Recentnotable examples are 1) scientometric analysis of social science research publications related to nanotechnology (Porter,Shapira, & Youtie, 2009), 2) hyperlink and content analysis of nanotechnology industry websites (Ackland, Gibson, Lusoli, &Ward, 2010 forthcoming). Further, in order to increase social science interest in the Europe research community, EuropeanUnion's Sixth Framework Programme initiated support for research into the societal dimensions of nanotechnology. In 2009,National Science Foundation of USA allocated 2.7% to societal and education concerns of nanotechnology (Porter, Shapira, &Youtie, 2009). However, the current literature still lacks social science examination of nanotechnology.The problem with existing literature on nanotechnology is that it hasn't been widely discussed, nor adequately examined relatedto Triple-Helix approach. The development of nanotechnology demands the involvement of industrial organizations and theircooperation with academic and public partners. Therefore, this paper examines the degree to which three significant functionalcarriers (academic, private, and public sectors) are sufficiently integrated at the network level to produce a new communicationsystem with respect to nanotechnology.MethodsData collectionAmong the many techniques for gathering websites related to nanotechnology, snowballing is used in this study. Snowballsampling is particularly useful in the case where the entire number of samples in a given research subject and whether theyentertain relations are a priori unclear (Garton et al., 1997). For example, Park and Thelwall (2008) took advantage of thissnowball sampling technique to visually map the specific political party's relevant blogging sphere and succeeded in detectinga collection of politically bi-linked bloggers that make a network having a particular party.The data for this research were harvested from the Yahoo.com's database. More specifically, the 871 nanotech-related webpagesthat hyperlinked to the Wikipedia's entry on nanotechnology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology) were taken usingthe Yahoo's advanced search option as of 9 July 2009. The Wikipedia was selected as the focal node for the mapping of onlinediscourse landscape because, as signaled in its title, the Wikipedia is the world's fastest and largest web-based collaborativedictionary in terms of the participatory contributors.Data analysisWe conducted a refined webometric analysis of 968 websites. Webometrics is broadly defined "as the study of web-basedcontent with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals and using techniques that are not specific to onefield of study." (Thelwall, 2009, p.6). Three types of webometric analyses were performed in this study. First, webpage authorswere classified into the following categories: public non-profit organizations/governmental sites, academics/universities, andprivate companies/industry sites. Second, the most prominent words were extracted from the summary information about thereturned webpages and communicational linkage among Triple-Helix actors was identified in terms of the shared keywords.Third, hyperlink network analyses were employed to investigate the structure of web-based nanotechnology discourse.FindingsWhile we are in the middle of analyzing our data, we present some preliminary findings. First, more than seven out of tenwebpages were industrial sites. Academic and public pages followed. Table 1 summarizes 871 nanotechnology-related webdocuments in terms of the institutional identities of their authors.Interestingly, on the close examination of the results shows that nanobot.blogspot.com is by far the most comprehensiveinformation source in terms of the number of returned document. 374 pages came from nanobot.blogspot.com. The next highlyretrieved websites are foolscleverbag.info (22 pages), divedi.blogspot.com (13 pages), nano.foe.org.au (8 pages),nanoart.blogspot.com (4 pages), and nanomedicinecenter.com (4 pages).Word frequency analysis was done using textual information extracted from the webpages. The distribution of frequent keywords is summarized in Table 2. The frequency of occurrence of each word is indicative of its relative level of public engagementfrom three Triple-Helix actors.Third, 871 webpages belonged to a total of 346 different websites. We selected only 20 websites that include "nano" in theirdomain. The proportion of websites according to their institutional types is as follows (see Table 3): Academic/University (5sites), Industry/Business (6 sites), Public/Government (5 sites), Not Available (4 sites). Hyperlink network analysis using thesites was conducted.Figure 1 shows the inter-link network of the twenty websites with their incoming and outgoing links to each other. This revealsMadrid, October 20, 21 & 22 - 2010255