Review and Conclusions

Background: One of the “go-to” news aggregators of the Web 2.0 era, Digg.com has undergone a deep transformation in the past 12 months. Once a hub for all types of online user generated content, 2009 and 2010 saw Digg face accusations of censorship, gaming of the system by users, and favouritism towards corporate outlets. In response to this, Digg rebranded itself as returning to its roots, which emphasized variety in content, and equality among the site’s users.

Over a period of 12 months, Digg’s front page content was analyzed in-depth to see if the site did indeed change, or if it remained in the state that originally brought about said accusations. With a previous, smaller scale study supporting these claims, the goal of this year-long study was to provide a screenshot of Digg prior to the site’s rebranding, and to follow the site through its rebranding process to see what has changed, and what has remained the same. It was predicted that a larger sample size would confirm the findings of the previous study, with much stronger and more valid results.

Study: The top stories from the first 15 pages of Digg’s front page were taken at the end of each month from June 2010, throughout Digg’s rebranding in August 2010, and until the end of the 12 month period in May 2010. The sample size contained a total of 2,679 submitted stories from 793 users, and a total of 397 different news sources. The text analysis tool Voyeur Tools was used to analyze this data and allow for results to be calculated.