The aim of the graph is to show if there are simple and basic connections between the main named entities, so the main actors, in the web pages analysis. Specifically, to check if our qualitative division of the actors in File Sharing Enemies, Neutral, Friends has real meaning based on inbound links on the web.
The actors are divided into three categories: the greens are the ones who don’t find anything negative in on-line file sharing; the orange ones don’t have a strong opinion or don’t comment about the theme; the red ones are strongly against file sharing. The outbound links that were found with Hyphe have a low-opacity stroke.
When one node (one actor) links to another node (another actor), a line is drawn. If the line is really green, the connection is on the side of the pro-file sharing faction; if the line is really red, the connection is on the side of the anti-file sharing faction. A light red or light green line means a less extreme connection.
The size of the nodes and the labels depends on how many links enter inside the node itself. Bigger node means more links.
A choice for this graph was made: it follows a qualitative and selective path to see every actor's personal network, starting from their most representative web pages. The aim is to dig into the most basic and direct web relationship of controversy’s personalities, and to find, thanks to crawling, more of them from this research.
The initial result was really messy: some web pages had hundreds out bounding links (IFPI), and some had almost none, but that didn’t tell if these actors were relevant. The cleaning phase was essential because, after that, the graph showed just shared connections, and revealed the missing pieces that gave sense to this selective network.
First of all, there is a strong division in the network: on the top, the file sharing enemies actors, with all the majors close to each other; on the bottom-center, the file sharing friends actors, mixed with various media and newspapers.
On the left side there is the “academic” cluster, with online libraries and the most important independent professors who wrote articles about the controversy. On the extreme left, out of the main connections, there is the group of Movie majors and software main actors.
On the right there is a more strange and heterogeneous group, with blogs and technical entities.
As single nodes, on the top left, there are several actors, who are quite relevant for the controversy but, apparently, have really small in common with the main connections. Especially, a first role actor like Lamar Smith, the politician who proposed SOPA law, is not connected with any other entity: this means that, on the web, he has no direct connections with the ones who pushed for the law, RIAA and MPAA, and that this link is probably private and/or personal, due to commercial or, probably, lobbying factors.
Another finding, taken from the first one, is that there are few connections overall, especially between the two main sides: the controversy is really polarized. Moreover, the most important interconnections are mainly Neutral actors. The graph shows that the Enemies side is really "public" and common inside webpages talking about the controversy: Enemies are a very solid network, some kind of army who fights for one goal, in which everyone has strong relationship with everyone else. On the other side, though, the Friends cluster is solid too. The connections between the two sides are always Neutrals, but the interesting thing is that the Friends cluster is made but heterogeneous actors, with different interests and visions. There are free culture ambassadors, professors, legal entities, bloggers, all united by the sympathy for file sharing, but not the real file sharing entities: no P2P services apart from the lonely BitTorrent, no trackers, no torrent blogs apart from the small node of TorrentFreak. Eventually, the real file sharing side, against which the Enemies are fighting, are not visible through web pages analysis.
