Webfluence is a 24-month project mainly supported by the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) and involving four partners: CNRS (CREA), Orange Labs, linkfluence and UPMC (LIP6).

Webfluence aims at studying some knowledge networks stemming from so-called "Web 2.0" websites. These social systems broadly provide  a large amount of open-access, very precise, dynamic, structural and semantic data about sizeable groups of individuals. Blogs, in particular, feature rich socio-semantic interactions which, in turn, make it possible to adopt a formal and quantitative point of view on several issues raised by social sciences. They moreover provide the occasion to investigate further current questions in complex systems theory: morphogenesis phenomena, information broadcast process and interactions at several scales, levels and in various networks.

More precisely, Webfluence will endeavor at analyzing, modeling and reconstructing the structure and dynamics of two specific social networks of the French Web: blogs of political opinion, and blogs dealing with leisure activities. The underlying complex socio-semantic system modeling should enable us to address social science questions pertaining to interactions with traditional media as well as their ability to "inoculate" these mass-media. Additionally, operational metrics regarding the audience and information broadcast will be defined -- both as indicators and visualizations -- on the project's Web site. Eventually, this Web site will be designed as a "Living Lab" in order to allow involved actors to evaluate research results directly.

Members Members and contact details are listed on the page Members.

Participating institutions

CNRS (CREA)  Orange Labs linkfluence UPMC (LIP6)

Agence Nationale de la Recherche