Treehugging 2.0: Powerful Niche Media in the Battle for a Better Future?

Table of Contents

Abstract

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Abbreviations

1. Introduction
1.1. Research Focus
1.2. Structure of the Study

2. Literature Review
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Blogs and the Blogosphere
2.3. Environmentalism
2.4. Methodological Models
2.5. Research Aim and Objectives

3. Methodology
3.1. Research Strategy
3.2. Ensuring the quality of the work
3.3. Ethical Aspects

4. Findings of the primary research
4.1. Blog Categories
4.2. Length of Entries
4.3. Reader Comments
4.4. Links to External Sources
4.5. Number of Authors
4.6. Purpose of the Blog
4.7. Blogs and Opinion
4.8. Relative Significance of the Environmental Blogosphere
4.9. Summary of Findings
4.10. Conclusion

5. Discussion and Synthesis of the Findings
5.1. Analysis of Blog Structures
5.2. Miscellaneous Factors

6. Conclusions
6.1. Research Objectives: Summary of Findings and Conclusions
6.2. Recommendations for Further Research
6.3. Contribution to Knowledge
6.4. Limitations of the Study

Appendix I: References

Appendix II: Research Journal

Appendix III: Raw Data from Primary Research (per blog)

Abstract

The environmental blogosphere – the entirety of blogs with a thematic focus on environmental issues – is the modern environmentalists’ platform to inform and mobilise audiences. Against the backdrop of an increased presence of environmental issues in current public debates, this study compares the German and the UK environmental blogospheres in order to advance an understanding of their distinctive structures and contents. This research aim was met through a comprehensive review of literature, as well as through primary research on a total of 800 blog entries from German and UK environmental blogs. The research method of choice was content analysis, but also an adapted version of grounded theory was applied to one element of research. The key findings this study produced include that the dominant thematic foci strongly differ between the two countries and that UK bloggers express their opinions more strongly than German ones. Paradoxically, the German environmental movement appeared to be stronger than the UK one in general, but the UK environmental blogosphere in turn seemed to be more capable in using blogs as a platform for lobbying. Concerning structural blog features, which include for example entry length and number of comments, the study found that the differences between the two countries are rather small, but that there are significant discrepancies with earlier structural blog research, pointing towards a rapid development of blogs over the past years. The study concludes that, although the UK environmental blogosphere is more developed than the German one, there is a lot of potential for both countries’ environmental movements to increase their power through blogging if they manage to blog more professionally and capture a larger readership.

List of Figures

Figure 1: Blog Categories Germany

Figure 2: Blog Categories UK

Figure 3: Average Length of Blog Entries in Words

Figure 4: Average Number of Links per 1,000 Words of Text

Figure 5: Average Use of “I” per 1,000 Words of Text

Figure 6: Top 20 General Blog Categories Germany

Figure 7: Top 20 General Blog Categories UK

Figure 8: The 5D Model of professor Geert Hofstede

List of Abbreviations

illustration not visible in this excerpt

1. Introduction

In the course of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the internet has become an integral part of our everyday lives and has changed the way we communicate with each other. The internet has lifted public self-expression to a new level that the “old” mass-media such as television or newspapers could not provide (e.g. Gerhards and Schäfer, 2010, Huang et al., 2007).

One of the most prominent ways to express oneself on the web is by keeping a weblog, or “blog” as it is mostly referred to nowadays. Blogs are defined here as regularly updated online diaries (Herring et al., 2004b) and can fulfil a variety of purposes which will be discussed in chapter 2. Anyone with internet access has the opportunity to start a blog. Blogging started out in the USA, soon followed by the UK, which was one of the first European countries to have widespread high-speed internet available, along with other countries, amongst which Germany (Pedersen and Macafee, 2007b).

While the online community was watching how the blogosphere, the entirety of blogs, grew to proportions that can only be vaguely estimated, issues like climate change and an increasing public awareness for environmental affairs that came hand in hand with it arose and started to capture societies’ attention.

Not surprisingly, people also started to blog about environmental issues, which was the hour of birth of the environmental blogosphere.

1.1. Research Focus

Yet, despite of the growing importance of environmental issues, no research specific to the environmental blogosphere has been conducted up to now. Against the background of a united Europe, which slowly merges the different cultures that it comprises, and in order to contribute to an otherwise rather US-centric research angle (Pedersen and Macafee, 2007b), the study at hand will provide an Anglo-German view on the environmental blogosphere. It will thus deliver valuable insights for a range of academic disciplines, principally to blog research and cultural research.

The research will take the shape of a comparative study, because some results only reveal their full explanatory power when seen in unison in two different countries, or, precisely when they stand in contrast to findings from other countries, which stimulates further research into the reasons for differing results.

Germany and the UK depict very suitable countries for a comparative study, because although they have many things in common, such as being powerful players in the European Union (EU) and being geographically close to each other, there are also significant differences between them. The UK is an Anglophone country and therefore has had a head start in computer and internet technology, which is dominated by English language. The UK also has a closer relationship than Germany to the USA, which dominate and influence other countries in many ways, including blogging. Germany and the UK are thus two highly interesting countries to compare. Briefly summarised, the aim of the research can be phrased as:

To advance an understanding of the distinctive characteristics of the German as well as the UK environmental blogosphere in terms of structure and content

In order to reach the research aim, it was felt necessary to find out more about environmentalism in the two countries and also to be clear about the nature of blogging and what is already known about it concerning the two countries. Without investigation of these two issues prior to the specific research into the environmental blogosphere, the results could have been misinterpreted. Understanding the differences between Germany and the UK in environmentalism and blogging separately was the basis for understanding them in combination - the environmental blogosphere. This knowledge was gained by performing a critical literature review. Only then, primary data was collected from a sample of German and UK environmental blogs, largely sticking to techniques that had been successful in previous blog studies, such as word counts. Finally with the backgrounds of blogging and environmentalism still in mind, conclusions could be drawn from the data gained from environmental blogs and the impacts of the results could be evaluated.

To summarise the above, the four research objectives which guided the research process are:

1. Identify how environmental movements have developed in Germany and the UK and assess their current state
2. Evaluate critically relevant knowledge on central features and characteristics of blogs in general, as well as blogs in Germany and the UK in particular
3. Explore and compare features of the German and the UK environmental blogosphere in terms of structure and content
4. Formulate an accurate snapshot of the current state of the German and UK environmental blogosphere and illustrate the implications of the findings

The objectives 3 and 4 evolved as a result of the critical literature review, but have been anticipated here for the convenience of the reader.

1.2. Structure of the Study

The first step to comparing the two countries was to collect general information on environmental movements in Germany and the UK as well as previous research results on blogging (objectives 1 and 2). This secondary data will be presented in the shape of a literature review in chapter 2. However, it was also found necessary to collect primary data in order to meet objective 3, whereby content analysis has been chosen as the most suitable research method for this kind of study, as it has proven effective in similar studies before (e.g. Herring et al., 2004a, Papacharissi, 2007, Zhou, 2009). It has been performed on the 20 top-ranked German as well as UK environmental blogs using a ranking provided by the website Wikio. Nevertheless, the research also contains elements of grounded theory. Chapter 3 provides more detailed information on research methodology and a justification of the choice of research instruments. The findings and discussion of the primary research will be presented in the chapters 4 and 5. The conclusions that were drawn from primary and secondary data are presented in chapter 6, which also suggests issues for further research and points out the limitations of the research project.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Introduction

Analysing blogs has become a popular research topic amongst academics, because the nature of blogs makes it easy to analyse them. They are in text form and the majority of bloggers keeps older posts in archives which are rarely modified or deleted. For this research the focus was on the top 20 German and UK environmental blogs.

The literature review is divided into three parts: blogs and the blogosphere, environmentalism and finally methodological models and research objectives. The section on blogs mainly deals with defining what a blog is, how blogs evolved, previous research done on blogs and the importance of blogging in Germany and the UK. The section on environmentalism provides a definition of what is meant by environmentalism in the context of this study, the history of environmentalism as well as its current state in Germany and the UK. The methodological models section 2.4. presents an overview of possible ways of researching blogs and illustrates them with examples from past research. Finally, the research objectives are developed as a result of previous research undertaken and presented in the literature review. The exact research methodology applied to this research will be explained in chapter 3.

2.2. Blogs and the Blogosphere

2.2.1. What Is a Blog?

The starting point of this research about the German and UK blogosphere was the definition of what a blog is. The term has evolved from the word weblog and blogs are defined by Susan C. Herring, who has conducted various pieces of research about blogs and enjoys big credibility among academics, as “frequently modified webpages containing individual entries displayed in reverse chronological sequence” (Herring et al., 2004b). In 2002, the blogger William Quick proposed to call “the intellectual cyberspace [the] bloggers occupy: the Blogosphere” (Quick, 2002). For this study, the term “environmental blogosphere” will be used frequently. By environmental blogosphere the segment of the blogosphere which covers environmental issues is meant.

It is typical for blogs to provide links to other blogs and websites in their posts and in the so-called blogroll, which is a list of other blogs a blogger considers worth reading. This way, by linking to each others’ blogs, a network with powerful and influential blogs in the centre and other blogs surrounding them is created (Tremayne, 2007b). It is also common for blogs to enable their readers to leave comments beneath blog entries, which encourages discussions and active participation by the readers (Mishne and Glance, 2006). There are both single-authored and multiple-authored blogs.

2.2.2. Who Uses Blogs and Why?

Blogs, as opposed to traditional media, are personal journals in which information gatekeeping does not occur to the extent it does in traditional media; bloggers can use their audience as a source, but also themselves, which researchers suspect to be one of the main attractions of blogging (Sundar et al., 2007). Reasons and motivations for blogging can generally be described as autobiographical reporting, commentary, catharsis, muse and community forum (Nardi et al., 2004). Blogs can thus function as internal information filters (e.g. personal journals), external information filters (e.g. world news) or appear in hybrid forms (Ko et al., 2008).

Other researchers, such as Blood (2002) use similar terms for blog categories such as filter blogs, personal journals and notebooks as the hybrid form. The German scholar Schönberger (2008) also adds knowledge blogs for collective knowledge management and blogs for marketing purposes to the above mentioned categories. Previous research suggests that around one third of blogs have a journalistic (filter) background, while two thirds are personal journals (Herring et al., 2004a). Schönberger (2008) criticises that despite being the minority of weblogs, scientific research predominantly focuses on the analysis of filter blogs.

As the blogs for marketing purposes demonstrate, blogs need not be personal or private in all cases. Also many businesses, politicians and organisations of all kinds engage in blogging. It is used as a means of public relations in order to establish relationships with stakeholders such as clients, employees, the voting public or the media. The goals of blogging for non-personal reasons can include for instance positioning one’s organisation as a thought leader or giving a human face to a large corporation (Weber, 2009).

2.2.3. The Internet as a Public Sphere

The concept of the blogosphere has frequently been discussed in relation to Habermas’ work about the transformation of the public sphere in which he describes the desirable public sphere as “an ideal democratic space for rational debate among informed and engaged citizens, a space that would thus be an arena mediating between state and society” (Rettberg, 2008:46). In his piece of work, Habermas (1990) illustrates how the bourgeois public sphere reached its peak in the 18th and 19th century in Europe; during this period of time the educated upper class of society engaged in rational-critical debates which Habermas considers the key feature of the public sphere and as an important pillar for true democracy. However, this feature vanished due to structural and economic changes, especially the evolution of mass media and society consequently became an accumulation of private people instead of a public space, merely “consuming” culture instead of creating and debating it, according to Habermas. Nowadays there are discussions to what extent the internet and the blogosphere represent Habermas’ vision of the ideal public sphere.

The internet seems to bring back elements of participation and to some extent even out the imbalance of information flow between mass media and the audience, which is now able to participate again instead of solely consuming information (Habermas, 2008). However, Habermas concludes that the internet is still lacking an important element of the ideal public sphere, namely structures which absorb information published by internet users and which re-publish that information in a synthesised way. Gerhards and Schäfer (2010), who also conducted research about the internet as an ideal public sphere, come to the conclusion that there are no significant differences in participation and representation of non-influential individuals or groups on the internet compared to mass media, which, in their opinion, indicates that the internet is not a better public sphere. They also point to the fact that search engines are gatekeepers of information on the internet and that they can be manipulated by the powerful groups and networks on the internet so that the minorities again find it hard to draw attention to their publications, because they do not appear in good positions in search engine rankings.

However, there are also discussions taking place with one of the arguments being that blogging is seen by many bloggers merely as a means of personal communication with friends, family or colleagues instead of communication with a broader public. This questions the significance of the debate about blogging in relation to the public sphere, since many bloggers do not seek to be part of any public sphere at all (i.e. Schönberger, 2008).

The debate continues to the present day, but does not heavily influence the focus of this study, although when discussing the results of the research, the topic will be brought up again when comparing the German and the UK blogosphere (see chapter 5).

2.2.4. History of Blogs

The precursors of what we know as blogs today appeared in the late 1990’s and the new technology became popular rapidly with the number of new blogs growing exponentially over the years (Herring et al., 2007a). Defining the current number of blogs is virtually impossible, but it can be considered a certainty that there are tens of millions (Caslon Analytics, 2009).

Blogs and the blogosphere have continued to become increasingly important and influential. An example which illustrates the rising influence of blogs is a bet between the blogger Dave Winer and New York Times journalist Martin Nisenholtz. In 2002 Winer bet the following and won: “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site” (Winer and Nisenholtz, 2002). Especially political blogs exert influence on various mainstream media (Tremayne, 2007b) and thus ultimately on the public opinion, though it needs to be kept in mind that research in this area focuses mainly on the US blogosphere.

After skyrocketing in the early years of the new millennium, the growth of the blogosphere is now slowing down, along with the number of blog entries published on a daily basis, which some consider a good development, as it leads to a professionalization of blogging, with less people starting a new blog and more abandoning their blog (Cheng, 2008). However, looked at from the perspective of the internet as a public sphere (see previous section) this is a negative sign, as the remaining bloggers are becoming more powerful gatekeepers, making it hard for new bloggers to make themselves heard (or read) in the public (blogo)sphere.

2.2.5. Research on Blogging

While the research about the US blogosphere is already quite advanced thanks to researchers such as Herring, comparatively little research has been conducted on the UK (Pedersen and Macafee, 2007b) and especially on Germany. Technorati, the largest search engine and index for weblogs, publishes annual reports about the state of the blogosphere. The latest report published in November 2010 shows that the biggest proportion of blogs worldwide (49%) is based in the US. The European Union accounts for 29% of the total amount of blogs (Sobel, 2010). Considering the volume of US blogs and the significance of the US as a nation it seems logic that it has been in the focus of research, but also research about other countries’ blogospheres is slowly developing. There has for instance been research on the Chinese blogosphere (Zhou, 2009), the Irish blogosphere (Lee and Bates, 2007) or the Polish blogosphere (Trammell et al., 2006). Research about Germany and the UK will be introduced in the following sections.

There are three main academic disciplines which are interested in blog research. While for media theorists, the main focus of research is the extent to which blogs pose a challenge to traditional media, computer scientists develop algorithms to automatically collect information on public opinion for market research and sociologists are interested in blogger communities and motivations for blogging (Thelwall, 2006). The piece of research at hand contributes to the sociological research angle.

In the sociological field, blog research often focuses on political blogs (i.e. Goode, 2009, Zhou, 2009, Etling et al., 2010) , which is also true for country-specific research for Germany (i.e. Ott, 2006) and the UK (i.e. Jackson, 2006, Dale, 2010b) . However, since environmentalism is an increasingly significant topic for public debate, as it will be demonstrated later in this chapter, the author believes that research should be intensified in this field.

2.2.6. Blogging in Germany

According to previous research, blog use and influence in Germany can be considered rather low despite Germany being a technologically advanced country with the highest number of internet users in Europe (Kloppe, 2010). Kloppe also states that the number of blogs in German language is estimated to be between 200,000 and 500,000. These also include Austrian and Swiss blogs in German language. This implies that the blog readership is significantly lower than that of other Western countries, such as the UK, as it will be demonstrated in the next section. According to a 2006 study, Kloppe argues further, two-thirds of German bloggers interviewed stated to cover political issues.

The German media scholar Neuberger confirms this in a radio interview (Deutschlandfunk, 2011) saying that blogging in Germany is much less professionalised than for example in the United States. He explains that in other countries, blogs form a sort of counterweight to the daily press. Neuberger admits that it is not entirely clarified yet why there is no such development in Germany, but he says that many experts believe that the German press is good enough for a counterweight to be redundant. Neuberger also mentions that bloggers and blog readers in Germany form something like an “insider circle which enjoys dealing with itself”, thus forming a somewhat elitist community. This statement is supported both by Kloppe’s (2010) argument mentioned above saying that the blog readership is rather small and by Gerhards’ and Schäfer’s (2010) findings about the internet not being a better public sphere.

In summary it can be said that blogging is not a central component of the media system in Germany and is in all likelihood considered merely a hobby by many bloggers. Nevertheless, there are many thousands of blogs in Germany and this has not been done justice yet by researchers considering that there is still relatively little research on blogging in Germany.

2.2.7. Blogging in the United Kingdom

Concerning the situation in the UK, researchers point out that, although blogging seems to be more popular in the UK than in Germany, the significance of blogging in the UK is still much lower than in the US, the front-runners of the blogosphere, and so far no UK blogger is able to make a living from blogging (Dale, 2008).

It is virtually impossible to determine the exact number of blogs in the UK which is partly due to the fact that English is spoken worldwide and so the language a blog is written in cannot provide enough evidence to determine that a blog is from the UK. Nevertheless, Pedersen and Macafee (2007b) cite sources which estimate that there were 2.5 million bloggers in the UK in 2005 (Riley, 2005, cited in Pedersen and Macafee, 2007b), which, according to another source equals around 7% of the UK internet users (Office of Communications, 2006, cited in Pedersen and Macafee, 2007b). It can be assumed that the number of blogs has grown even further by now.

Dale (2008) stresses that mainstream media, such as The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian or The Spectator, also attempt to keep successful blogs, mostly of political nature. However, most of them are still struggling to find an audience comparable in size to the audiences of the UK top political blogs kept by citizens.

In a nutshell, it can be seen that there are far more blogs in the UK than in Germany and that in terms of development, the UK ranges somewhere between Germany and the US, probably closer to the US. Despite all similarities with the US blogosphere, the UK blogosphere is not yet very well researched, but researchers are busy changing that and this study will contribute yet another puzzle piece.

After the concepts of blogging and its respective popularity in Germany and the UK have been illuminated, the following sections will broach the issue of environmentalism.

1.

2.

2.3. Environmentalism

For the purpose of this study, environmentalism will be looked at in its broadest sense. As it will be clarified later, the most popular blogs with the environment as their main theme often either deal with niche topics of environmentalism or with various different topics, some of which do not necessary count as “environmental”.

According to Marangudakis (2001) there are two concepts of environmentalism that need to be distinguished. The first one is anthropocentric and thus regards environmental protection as a necessity for welfare of the society. The second one however is ecocentric, with humanity being in the role of worshippers of the supreme Nature, which sometimes is also referred to Mother Earth, Great Being of Life or Gaia.

This study will focus on the anthropocentric meaning of environmentalism, the one that puts society in the centre, because all environmental blogs that were analysed deal with this type of environmentalism.

2.3.1. Environmental Movements

Environmental movements exist in various forms, but the core belief all movements share is the ability of humans to change aspects of the biophysical environment in order to eliminate or minimise the effects they have on things that humans care about (Stern et al., 1999). Stern et al. also distinguish movement activists and movement supporters, activists being the core of the movement, heavily involved in actions, while supporters sympathise with the movement and are prepared to take part in actions and give money in a more limited way than the activists. According to this distinction, it can be assumed that people who care to invest time in setting up an environmental blog are activists.

There are various reasons why people wish to protect the environment. Especially in the West, the fast development of cities, industry and materialism has lead to a “psychological angst” (Marangudakis, 2001:459) and that way fuelled the desire to get back to nature (Marangudakis, 2001). Just how far society has already moved away from nature is illustrated by an article published on the website of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (Blawat, 2011) which states that German children, regardless whether they grew up on the countryside or in cities, have an inhibited relationship with nature. An interviewee who manages a nature conservancy centre criticises that children can report on climate change and explain terms like “Kyoto Protocol” while at the same time being scared of insects and climbing on trees.

Before taking a closer look at the environmental movement in Germany and the UK it will be specified a bit more what exactly is meant by “Germany” and “the UK”.

2.3.2. Defining Germany and UK

When talking about the situation of the environmental movement in “Germany” between 1949 and 1990, this refers to the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) which was separated from the communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany) during that period of time. The Eastern German federal states were officially reunited with the West in October 1990. When referring to the environmental movement of “Germany” in the 1990’s and beyond, the reunited Federal Republic of Germany in its current shape is meant.

When talking about the “UK” or “United Kingdom”, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is meant, which has been in its current shape since 1922 when the Republic of Ireland became independent and only Northern Ireland remained part of the UK.

After clarifying which countries this study will address, the following sections will look at their involvement in environmentalism.

2.3.3. Environmentalism in Germany

Although conservative environmental movements had been around much longer, the modern environmental movement in Germany evolved in the late 1960’s when a new generation of university students was seeking to break free from what had moved their parents’ generation which had been heavily influenced by the Holocaust and the Second World War (Dryzek et al., 2003). The movement was strongly connected with the anti-nuclear and the peace movements that took place in the same period of time. However, politics excluded the anti-nuclear and the environmental movement from their agenda which led to an “oppositional counter-culture” (Dryzek et al., 2003:37) which in turn led to the German Green Party now having a programme that goes beyond addressing environmental issues. Rather, their programme is one of societal change in its entireness.

Once an offspring of the environmental movement of the late 1960’s the German Green Party, founded in 1980, has been an important political player since it first entered the German parliament (Bundestag) in 1983 and certainly since it first formed a coalition with the social democrats (SPD) in 1998, thus actively participating in running the country.

Also in the new millennium environmental issues continue to be an important part of Germany’s public policy and debates (OECD, 2001). A very current example is the success of the Green Party in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg where the party won the elections and appointed the first Green leader of a state parliament in Germany, this time having the social democrats as their smaller coalition partner. According to data presented by Spiegel Online (Der Spiegel, 2011), if there were general elections at the time of writing this report (summer 2011) it would be possible that Germany elected its first Green chancellor. Environmental issues that move Germany at the time of writing mostly deal with the future of energy supply, which involves Germany’s nuclear phase-out (i.e. Süddeutsche, 2011) and the development of stable networks powered by renewable energy (i.e. Preuß, 2011).

2.3.4. Environmentalism in the UK

In the UK, the environmental movement has grown stronger only in recent years. While the environmental movement in Germany rose along with other movements in the late 1960’s, some groups such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had already existed for several decades then and unlike the German groups, those early UK environmentalist groups did not see themselves in opposition to the government, but were in fact collaborating, some of the groups even receiving royal patronage. Nevertheless, those groups hardly had any political influence and lobbying showed little effect (Dryzek et al., 2003). Only in the 1970’s did the environment gain more importance in public, which can be traced, for example, through increased and regular coverage of environmental issues in The Times (Clapp, 1994). Still, the government refused to make major concessions to environmental claims and leaked documents dated to 1979 from Thatcher’s term reveal that there were plans to reduce sensitivity for environmental concerns among the population. In the 1980’s budget cuts further reduced environmental agencies’ (e.g. Clean Air Council) power (Dryzek et al., 2003). Environmental issues were thus being actively excluded from the political agenda in the UK.

From the 1980’s however, the European Community (EC) and later its successor, the European Union (EU), which the UK was (and continues to be) a member of, influenced environmental politics in the country. Environmental groups now had a new platform for lobbying in Brussels. During the 1990’s UK politics opened up to moderate environmental groups, but continued to actively exclude groups they considered non-moderate. The Blair Government which was elected in 1997 seemingly engaged more in environmental issues and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was elected minister for the environment, which was to demonstrate the importance the government seemed to ascribe to the environment. However, despite some actions that the government took in environmental questions, the issue was still not on top of the political agenda (Dryzek et al., 2003).

The electoral system also complicated business for the Green Party in the UK. Despite achieving reasonable shares of votes the party could not gain any seats in parliament in the past. Only in the 1990’s The Greens were able to gain more power when two members were elected to the European Parliament and one to the Scottish Assembly (Dryzek et al., 2003). The party separated in the 1990’s and now consists of the sister parties Green Party of England and Wales, Green Party in Northern Ireland and Scottish Green Party (Green Party of England and Wales, 2011). On a national level the first green MP won a seat in parliament in the general elections of 2010 (BBC News, 2010).

Nowadays in the UK, public concerns about the environment and related issues are growing. Survey results published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) show that over the past years the knowledge about environmental issues has increased among the population and more people are willing to do things to help the environment, thus being potential movement supporters (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, 2009).

2.3.5. Differences in Environmentalism between Germany and the UK

In summary it can be said that even though there were environmental groups much earlier in the UK than in Germany, their political influence remained and still remains limited. While political exclusion triggered a strong oppositional culture in Germany and the electoral system lifted the German Greens into power, environmental groups in the UK struggled to exert much influence on politics. The UK electoral system also prevented the Green Party from winning any seats in the national parliament for a long time. In 2010 the Green Party of England and Wales succeeded to have the first green MP elected to the national parliament while in Germany the first green leader of a federal state has assumed office and election forecasts for the next general election look bright for The Greens in Germany.

After the theory about blogs and environmentalism has been reviewed, the following section will introduce the approaches that previous studies have taken in order to conduct blog research.

2.4. Methodological Models

In order to assess which research techniques would be suitable for this study about environmental blogs previous studies on blogs have been critically evaluated. In terms of research methodology, earlier studies of the blogosphere have primarily made use of quantitative approaches such as content analysis.

Papacharissi (2007) for example performed some basic research using content analysis when there was still little research done on blogs and examined what characteristics were typical for blogs in terms of content, structure and design. She concluded that, at the time she was researching, blogs “presented low-tech, self-referential, verbose attempts to display personal thoughts and information, with little interest for how these thoughts would be received by an audience” (Papacharissi, 2007:37).

Susan C. Herring certainly is one of the pioneers and central researchers in the area of blog research. Her work is referred to in almost every piece of research about blogs and she has published multiple papers on different topics concerning the blogosphere. She makes use of content analysis frequently, for example in assessing to what extend blogs are interconnected (Herring et al., 2005a) or in performing a genre analysis of blogs (Herring et al., 2004a).

Besides general research introduced above, there has also been research on particular parts of the blogosphere. In the UK, Iain Dale researches political blogs (i.e. Dale, 2010a) and also the biblioblogosphere is a popular research subject (i.e. Kaden et al., 2007, Lee and Bates, 2007). Etling et al. (2010) provide an example for country-specific blog research, attempting to map the Arab blogosphere. Some of these researchers also made use of qualitative techniques, such as interviews, in order to gain insight into the blogosphere (i.e. Smith, 2010).

There have also been comparative studies before that analysed and compared blog data of two or more countries. Examples are a comparison of the German and the Chinese blogosphere conducted by He et al. (2007) using content analysis and a comparison of UK and US blogging practices by Pedersen and Macafee (2007a) who surveyed 120 bloggers.

The author believes that content analysis will also prove useful as the primary research method for the comparisons between German and UK blogs, because content analysis provides a simple and little error-prone way of research, when performed correctly. Further information about the research methodology applied to this study will be provided in the following chapter.

2.4.1. The Environmental Blogosphere – Uncharted Territory

As seen previously, the importance of environmental issues is increasing. In spite of that, to the knowledge of the author, no research on the environmental blogosphere has been published yet, even though blogs exert influence on public opinion and debate to a certain degree and could therefore manipulate societies’ opinions on environmental issues and eventually change political actions and standpoints of a country. This study therefore aims at making an initial contribution to closing this gap of knowledge. Reviewing the literature led to the research aims and objectives, which have been introduced in chapter 1, but will be repeated here for the convenience of the reader.

2.5. Research Aim and Objectives

The previously presented results of earlier research summarised in the literature review depict the first step to reaching the aim and objectives of this research project, which have already been introduced in chapter 1. To remind, the reader, the research aim and objectives were

Research aim:

To advance an understanding of the distinctive characteristics of the German as well as the UK environmental blogosphere in terms of structure and content

Research objectives:

1. Identify how environmental movements have developed in Germany and the UK and assess their current state
2. Evaluate critically relevant knowledge on central features and characteristics of blogs in general, as well as blogs in Germany and the UK in particular
3. Explore and compare features of the German and the UK environmental blogosphere in terms of structure and content
4. Formulate an accurate snapshot of the current state of the German and UK environmental blogosphere and illustrate the implications of the findings

Objective 1 and 2 have been addressed in this chapter and the results for objective 3 will be presented in chapter 4. The final summary and conclusion for all objectives can be found in chapter 6. But first, in chapter 3 the research methodology will be explained.

3. Methodology

In this chapter, the research methodology is described. The primary scientific technique used to analyse the data was content analysis and this chapter provides information on the benefits and limitations of this technique as well as an explanation of the sampling and coding process and evaluations of reliability and validity of the research results. Additionally, an adapted version of grounded theory was applied, which will also be explained in detail in this chapter. The next chapter will then provide the findings of the content analysis.

3.1. Research Strategy

This study can be termed an empirical comparative study. “Empirical” denotes that the data has been collected through the use of human senses (Oliver, 2010) and can be applied to qualitative as well as quantitative research techniques. In this particular study data was predominantly collected through quantitative, statistical observations in the shape of content analysis and partly by using grounded theory.

The subjects of comparison of this study are the German and the UK environmental blogosphere. Comparative studies can be problematic, because often variables to be analysed differ between countries which makes them harder to compare, but nonetheless there is an increased demand for this type of research against the backdrop of European integration as well as globalisation (Clasen, 1999). In order to make the figures from the content analysis comparable between both countries, the calculations have been performed using percentages or per mills. This will be explained in more detail in the following section.

3.1.1. Content Analysis

This research has made use of content analysis, a technique which is thought to be “the fastest-growing technique in quantitative research” (Neuendorf, 2002:1), although there are also researchers who regard content analysis as a qualitative technique (Harris, 2001). It is valued for yielding objective data through counting, thanks to data collection taking place according to pre-defined “explicit rules” (Berg, 1998:224, cited in Harris, 2001:193).

Riffe et al. (1998) regard replicability and quantification as the central strengths of content analysis, but also acknowledge that these are often the main points of criticism of using content analysis, because, if not used correctly, it can lead to superficial research results. Holsti (1969:10, cited in Riffe et al., 1998:29) has called it “precision at the cost of problem significance”. The superficiality criticism is fortified by content analysis’ intention to interpret the manifest meaning of content, which is the linguistically denotative meaning. Critics argue that it neglects the latent, between-the-lines meaning of content. However, Riffe et al. (1998) challenge this argument by pointing out that manifest meanings can be interpreted without having to talk to the communicators or receivers. Besides, if there are multiple coders, the manifest meaning is the only one that is largely objective and judged equally by the coders.

Generally, being a quantitative technique, content analysis can be assumed to be more transparent, to deliver more objective results than a qualitative technique and to be easier to replicate and generalise (Daymon, 2002). For the research presented here, objectivity was one of the main goals and the numeric analysis had proven very suitable in related previous research (see Chapter 2.4.).

Nevertheless, in order to yield the desired results, research needs to be planned carefully. Harris (2001:194) suggests eight steps for performing content analyses:

1) Identify the questions to be asked and constructs to be used
2) Choose the texts to be examined
3) Decide on the size or type of response to be counted in the analysis, the so-called “unit of analysis”
4) Determine the categories into which the responses are to be divided
5) Generate the coding scheme
6) Conduct a sample or pilot study and revise the categories and coding scheme as needed
7) Collect the data
8) Assess validity and reliability, having earlier reviewed how validity can be enhanced and assessed

These steps have been followed and will be described in more detail in the following sections of this chapter. Several pilot studies (see step 6) have been conducted and consequently the process started again at step 3 until the resulting data sets seemed suitable to answer the research questions which evolved from coding (see also section 3.1.3.).

3.1.2. Sampling and Coding

For the research project 20 popular blogs about environmental topics were analysed. In order to figure out which blogs were most popular in Germany and the UK, a ranking by the website Wikio has been used. Wikio has also been used in previous studies, such as Dale (2010b), Schall and Müller (2011) and Torres-Zúñiga (2009) and was therefore considered a valid source. Next to that, Wikio is one of the few platforms that provide rankings for several countries. By using a single platform to obtain rankings for two countries it could be ensured that the algorithms according to which the ranking was created were the same for both samples. This adds reliability to the study, which will be discussed more closely in section 3.2.1 Some blogs were excluded from the sample because they did not show the typical features of a blog which have been discussed in chapter 2. The sample consisting of 20 blogs each from Germany and the UK was thus actually taken from the top 30 of the Wikio ranking.

From each of the 20 sampled blogs the latest 20 entries including comments were collected. Data collection took place on the 1st, 2nd and 4th of July 2011. The latest posts included are therefore posted on the 4th of July and any comments made after that date were not included in the data analysis. This resulted in 400 German blog entries and 400 UK blog entries plus comments. All blog entries and comments were saved locally on a computer so that potential amendments made by the bloggers at a later point in time would not bias the research. The units of research were thus the blog entries.

During data analysis a distinction has also been made between single-authored and multi-authored blogs as well as private and non-personal blogs (see also chapter 4). Non-personal blogs include corporate blogs, blogs of NGOs and other types of organisations as well as blogs of politicians, which were only found in the UK sample.

The coding categories were designed to deliver suitable data in accordance with research objective 3. Coding variables included number of authors, private or non-personal blog, blog category^[1], number of links in post, number of comments per entry, number of words per entry excluding title and number of the personal pronoun “I” per 1,000 words (see Appendix II for coding instructions). Each of the variables has been analysed statistically according to the blog in itself and the country, so that comparisons could be made easily. In developing the codebook, previous blog research (see chapter 2.4.) has been used as a benchmark in order to identify good practice and come up with meaningful variables.

While the analysis of some variables, such as number of words or number of links, are purely quantitative and not very prone to human errors, establishing the different categories is more subjective with the author deciding the number and denotation of categories as well as placing blogs and blog entries into the categories. This process will be described closely in section 3.1.4. After establishing the categories though, a quantitative approach was used again to count and compare the number of blogs and blog entries in certain categories. Section 3.2. about ensuring the quality of the work will provide more details on this issue.

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^[1] Section 3.1.4 will provide detailed information on how the categories were established using grounded theory