Maybe David or Prentiss can help me out with this little dispute in my "Interactive Multimedia Research" class. We're discussing ""Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis 'From the Bottom Up'" by S.C. Herring, et al. The paper (and the student presenting on the paper) uses political blogs such as Instapundit as examples of "A-List" blogs. I objected to this use of "A-List," since I associate it with first-generation tech bloggers like Kottke, Doc Searls, or BoingBoing. I am wrong in my understanding of how "A-List" is used colloquially?
The paper cites Rebecca Blood for the use of the term "A-list" but hedges it's bets in a footnote, saying, "In this paper, we use 'A-list' as an operational shorthand to refer to the most popular blogs as determined by number of inbound links," which would apply to the Instapundits, but would probably ignore a lot of bloggers I would consider "A-List Bloggers." If highly-linked blogs are the focus of the paper, she could have used another, less loaded term like "supernodal blog."
To make this a true "blogblogbloggyblog" post, I believe this is the first time I've actually posted to my blog while sitting in class.
yep, you're wrong. a-list is typically used to describe people/places/things in terms of popularity/status, e.g., a-list celebrities vs. b-list celebs. yep, it is a problematic term and out of place imo, "most popular" would have worked just fine.
Posted by: jojo at April 28, 2005 10:04 PMI'm well familiar with the usage of "A-List" in the sense of "a-list celeb," but I haven't seen "A-List blogger" used to describe political bloggers on the blogs I read, only Kottke and the like. "Yep, you're wrong." What's with these condescending comments, Joanna?
Posted by: m4dd4wg at April 28, 2005 10:22 PMI've always taken "A-list" to mean the most-read blogs -- which started out as being mostly tech blogs but has shifted as blogging broadened its appeal.
That could just be me, though.
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