The Infoscape Lab provides timely analysis of on-line Canadian political communication strategies. We specifically provide analysis of the top partisan bloggers, the top news stories circulating in the blogopshere, as well as candidates' usage of social networking platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Each week we will provide the following basic information about Canadian politics on-line:
- Facebook Movers and Shakers: Over 7 million Canadians use Facebook, and Facebook groups are one of the most popular ways for someone to express their political views. We track political candidates’ groups each week on the Facebook social network platform. You’ll be able to find out which candidates are attracting the most members to their groups and profiles, and who is being attacked by grassroots on-line citizen groups.
- Blog MediaBuzz: Our Blog MediaBuzz charts highlight the most frequently mentioned media stories and blog stories among partisan bloggers, from a sample of over 500 Canadian blogs.
- TagCloud: The TagCloud is an alphabetical listing of the most frequent issues mentioned by partisan bloggers each week. The TagCloud represents word frequency by visually making the words with higher frequencies appear larger in size. Click on the words to obtain a Google search listing of stories on that particular topic.
- YouTube Ratings: We track the weekly top video clips featuring the Federal party leaders being shared on the YouTube social network platform. These clips can come from anyone: activists, bloggers, industry, lobbyists, pundits, and political parties.
Find out who is posting the clips and what reactions people are having to the media. We are also able to offer analysis of the party platforms discussed on-line, policy issues, interest groups, and party home pages. Some of these additional items will appear intermittently during the campaign.
