Author: Stephen Taylor

Photos of the devastation

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New Orleans Times-Picayune
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I’ve been working on a new tool that ranks Canadian MPs by the buzz that they’ve generated in the blogosphere.

Technorati is a website that tracks over 16.2 million blogs (at the time of this writing). The difference between a search engine such as Technorati and Google is that Technorati indexes posts as they happen. Therefore, the website provides a live look at the current buzz surrounding any query.

I’ve written a program that queries Technorati’s search engine with the names of each of the 302 currently sitting MPs. The program receives the number of posts that discusses each MP and then sorts them in descending order.

I’m still tweaking the program, but so far, the results are quite intriguing.

The top 40 MPs by blogosphere buzz (# posts as of 5am this morning):
1. Paul Martin 19103
*. John Williams 9153
2. Stephen Harper 8354
*. Michael Savage 3912
3. Jack Layton 2957
4. Belinda Stronach 2737
*. David Smith 1982
5. Bill Graham 1401
6. Carolyn Parrish 1280
*. Richard Harris 1251
7. Peter MacKay 1251
8. Ujjal Dosanjh 1100
9. David Anderson 1081
10. Irwin Cotler 1025
11. Gilles Duceppe 984
12. Gurmant Grewal 919
13. Anne McLellan 902
*. Derek Lee 882
14. Pierre Pettigrew 812
15. Ralph Goodale 791
16. Stockwell Day 745
17. Judy Sgro 727
*. James Moore 725
18. Joe Volpe 670
19. Scott Brison 652
20. David Kilgour 645
21. Monte Solberg 595
*. Tony Martin 581
22. Andy Scott 484
23. John Reynolds 480
24. Larry Miller 467
25. Keith Martin 466
26. John McKay 465
27. Ken Dryden 448
28. Scott Reid 448
29. Jean Lapierre 434
30. Jason Kenney 430
31. Ed Broadbent 325
32. John Duncan 306
33. Tony Valeri 285
34. Randy White 268
35. David Emerson 264
36. Liza Frulla 255
37. Jim Peterson 249
38. Pat Martin 235
39. Joe Comuzzi 231
40. John Godfrey 229

* I’ve dropped a few names out of the list for various reasons (John Williams is a world-famous movie score composer, Michael Savage is a polarizing radio host in the US, David Smith is a very common name, Richard Harris was Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies etc.). I’m not sure how to refine the results for these MPs without biasing the entire methodology (ie. adding “MP” reduces the number of results for both David Smith and Belinda Stronach).

I’m going to add to the program so that results are gathered on a weekly basis and results will be compared on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis to determine the MPs that are rising in the blogosphere.

Another interesting note is that the popularity of an MP’s name in the blogosphere is not entirely desirable. Scandal is more often buzz-worthy than praise as Carolyn Parrish, Ujjal Dosanjh and Gurmant Grewal are all familiar with this.

I’m also going to be playing with a few extensions to this idea, such as tracking election issues and future leadership contenders (such as Michael Ignatieff).

You can almost hear the rush of right-wing punditry rushing to cover this story posted on CTV.ca today. In fact, Ravishing Light and ALW have already weighed in.

In a poll conducted by Decima Research, the effect of the CBC lockout was gauged on a random sample of about 1000 people. Here are the numbers:
61% – no effect on their lives
27% – minor inconvenience
10% – A major inconvenience

Particularly fun are the reports admissions of the political implications surrounding the lockout.

“The poll is powerful ammunition for CBC critics who resent the broadcaster’s yearly taxpayer contribution of more than $900 million.”

The number is precisely $933 million. This is the money that comes in, every year to a network that only really serves 10% of a captive population. Here’s a chart showing how much the CBC takes in from the government (ie. the taxpayer), year after year.

That’s almost $1 Billion a year. Ask CTV/Global/CHUM how much they similarly receive from the government. Should this crown corporation be competing with the private sector?

Both CTV News and Global National News reported related audience boosts. (due to the lockout)

Another interesting and not at all surprising fact was uncovered by the poll:

Those who said they were most inconvenienced by the lockout tended to be Liberal and NDP voters or older people, the poll found. Most other respondents said they had not been affected.

From the other side of the political debate comes Ian Morrison of the association called “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” with a threat.

“The impact will be much greater if the lockout extends into October when Hockey Night in Canada and other programs typically attract millions of viewers”. — Ian Morrison

For the 10% of the Canadian population that have had their lives turned upside down, rest assured that if hockey doesn’t end the lockout, the Corpse will be back on the air before the election.