Tracing Eurosceptic Party Networks via Hyperlink Network Analysis and Failing: Can Web Crawlers Keep up with Web Design?

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperResearch

  • Michael Bossetta
  • Anamaria Dutceac Segesten
This #FAIL! paper is the result of our experience with the hyperlink analysis software ‘Issuecrawler’ (www.govcom.org) whilst writing the paper “The Europeanization of Eurosceptics? A Hyperlink Network Analysis of the Sweden Democrats” for the 2015 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions. While attempting to visually map the online hyperlink network of the Sweden Democrats, a Swedish far-right Eurosceptic party, we found the Issuecrawler’s inability to read JavaScript a critical limitation to our study. Knowing that other scholars from a range of disciplines are currently using the Issuecrawler and largely unquestioning its generated data, we produced this #FAIL! paper to educate other researchers about our experience and invite their opinions about the analytical utility of this digital method for future research. Can the software be improved to accompany dynamic programming languages? Or, is its inability to read JavaScript (a limitation shared by all current web crawling software) a reason to fundamentally question its utility as a digital method?
Original languageEnglish
Publication dateJun 2015
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2015
EventACM Web Science 2015 - Oxford, United Kingdom
Duration: 28 Jun 20151 Jul 2015

Conference

ConferenceACM Web Science 2015
CountryUnited Kingdom
CityOxford
Period28/06/201501/07/2015

    Research areas

  • Faculty of Social Sciences - Euroscepticism , Social Media, Digital Methods, Issuecrawler, Hyperlink Network Analysis , Europeanization

Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk


No data available

ID: 145776309