Blog Links as Pipelines to Buzz Elsewhere: The Case of New York Theater Blogs

The concept of buzz is both new and heavily contested. One of the strongest debates about buzz is the possibility of ‘virtual buzz’ or buzz that takes place online. At the heart of this debate is the importance of real-time, face-to-face contact. To investigate virtual buzz we present a study of a network of weblogs, or blogs, which share a topical focus on the New York City theater scene. Using social network analysis we find that these blogs exhibit a dense network of interlinkages between each other, with no dominant blog controlling the discourse. We believe this to be indicative of a buzz-like environment. We conclude by discussing the advantages that the study of blogs has for the field of economic geography.