Carmel vaisman’s research is utterly fascinating. She is a phd student in Israel, writing a dissertation on the Israeli blogosphere, specifically the Isra-blog platform. Israel is considered a technology leader, quickly adopting widespread use of new applications and online norms. Blogs took off in Israel only in 2001, with the creation of Isra-blog, the largest of the existing Israeli blogging sites.
Israeli blogs are technologically different from their counterparts in the US, with two distinctions: comment spaces in US blogs are linear while in Israel they have a tree structure (similar to that of web forums). This format enables more constructive commenting since it supports numerous simultaneous threads. Secondly, Carmel claims that in the US the importance in a blog’s format is its text and links, while in Israel there is an emphasis on diversity and giving a user control over design features, while some of the options are given at a cost. She mentions that the Israeli media rarely covers the Israeli blogosphere, unlike the US. Those who DO mention Hebrew blogs are the tech writers and journalists.
Below is a video of her talk, focused on the rise of major Israeli political blogs and their effect on policy. She opens with a question – Why Israeli-political blogs are not as influential as their counterparts in the States? She claims that the Israeli model for influence and effect is culturally different than that of the US, and that the Israeli blogosphere might possibly be more influential than we think. She backs her hypothesis with some good examples (in Hebrew):