Networks of the dead or alive in cyberspace: public intellectuals in the mass and internet media

Abstract

This article addresses whether dead public intellectuals differ from living public intellectuals in terms of their social network properties in the mass and internet media. Explicated at the theoretical level is the macro-level asynchrony of the web, moving beyond micro-level conceptualizations. Networks for 662 actors which Posner defined as public intellectuals are analyzed based on data from Nexis for magazines, newspapers and broadcast media, and on the web through Google and Google Groups. The differences between the media profiles of dead and living public intellectuals are assessed. As hypothesized, there are no significant differences between living and dead public intellectuals in hits for webpages and for Google Groups threadedness. Also, mass media hits show a significantly higher frequency for the living. Findings show that dead public intellectuals have a social `afterlife', a sociomorphic quality that continues in cyberspace and not in other media.

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