From Blogging goes mainstream on the concept of 'hive brain':
"The way bloggers link and influence each other's thinking could lead to a collective thought process, "a kind of hive brain," said Chris Cleveland, who runs Dieselpoint..."
The analysis of the 'hive brain' concepts sounds like a perfect candidate for the actor-network theory and methodology.
A conceptual (and practical) topology would be a collection of blogs (according to some criteria) linked to each other via the http (and XML) links/referrers and trackbacks. Then, the affect/influence of a particular blog on the rest of the collection of blogs could be analyzed by tracing its residual and ongoing affect, as well as the affect onto itself as a result of being part of the topology.
Needless to say, the open content and the degree of openness of the communication links between the various blogs is of outmost importance. Without the openness the concept of blogs and blogging would not be in the realm as we know it today: blogs and blogging have a meaning in the collection of other blogs and not as isolated entities.
Related:
Defining the ingredients of actor-network and open-content open-communication
