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Dynamic Network Logistic Regression: A Logistic Choice Analysis of Inter- and Intra-Group Blog Citation Dynamics in the 2004 US Presidential Election

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Zack W. Almquist  and
Carter T. Butts
Zack W. Almquist*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, School of Statistics, and the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455
Carter T. Butts
Affiliation:
Departments of Sociology and Statistics, Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 e-mail: buttsc@uci.edu
*
e-mail: almquist@umn.edu (corresponding author)
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Abstract

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Methods for analysis of network dynamics have seen great progress in the past decade. This article shows how Dynamic Network Logistic Regression techniques (a special case of the Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models) can be used to implement decision theoretic models for network dynamics in a panel data context. We also provide practical heuristics for model building and assessment. We illustrate the power of these techniques by applying them to a dynamic blog network sampled during the 2004 US presidential election cycle. This is a particularly interesting case because it marks the debut of Internet-based media such as blogs and social networking web sites as institutionally recognized features of the American political landscape. Using a longitudinal sample of all Democratic National Convention/Republican National Convention—designated blog citation networks, we are able to test the influence of various strategic, institutional, and balance-theoretic mechanisms as well as exogenous factors such as seasonality and political events on the propensity of blogs to cite one another over time. Using a combination of deviance-based model selection criteria and simulation-based model adequacy tests, we identify the combination of processes that best characterizes the choice behavior of the contending blogs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Autumn 2013 , pp. 430 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

Footnotes

Authors' note: The authors would like to thank the participants and organizers in the QMSS 2 Conference on Power, Decision Making, and Social Networks, University College, Dublin, Ireland; and the participants and organizers of the 4th Annual Political Networks Conference, University of Michigan (where this work won a best methodology poster award). The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their kind and helpful suggestions. Finally, the authors would like to mention that the data and code are available at Almquist and Butts (2013a).

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