Air Force Funds $450,000 Blog Study

Posted on July 3, 2006

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research believes a comprehensive study of blogs may help fight the War on Terror. To facilitate this they have spent $450,000 on a three year study of blogs and blog patterns. One of the scientists responsible for the study, Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, has already found some amazing blog patterns.

"Blog entries have a different structure," Ulicny said. "They are typically short and are about something external to the blog posting itself, such as a news event. It's not uncommon for a blogger to simply state, 'I can't believe this happened,' and then link to a news story."
In this example, Ulicny said, there might not be much of interest in the blog posting, yet the fact that the blogger called attention to this story can be significant to understanding what matters.

Dr. Ulicny is correct. In fact, blog posts may occasionally be shorter than the title of the $450,000 study: "Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information."