A year ago, I wrote a slightly maudlin blog about the good and the not-so-good reasons for solo-blogging in this time and age. Good reasons or not, I kept up the good work with 35 blogs in 2018. That is a bit less than my long-term annual average, but Chapeau to my good self nonetheless.
But what were the most popular (used in a strictly relative sense) posts on the blog in 2018? Here is your handy guide:
- #10 Sampling from a Multinomial Distribution in Stata
Who hasn’t found themselves in the situation where they want to sample from a multinomial distribution (IRONY KLAXON!)? It’s easily done in R. In Stata, you have to go through a few hoops. This short 2011 post is still reasonably popular, seven years down the line, because it tells you how you do it. - #9 How the Extreme Right became the Radical Right
was published only a fortnight ago. It’s a short blog on the intellectual structure and development of European Radical Right studies, derived from my recent chapter on this topic. - #8 Quick and Fancy Conference Posters with beamer/beamerposter
is another evergreen (from 2011). If you bite the LaTeX bullet, you can easily create wonderful conference posters from your graphs etc. Here is how. - #7 I have updated the bibliography on the Extreme Right in Europe,
published in April 2018, summarises the main changes to the bibliography that I maintain. - #6 A few thoughts on the framing of the AfD’s result in Bavaria
In the Bavaria state election in October 2018, the AfD did actually less well than many had expected. But to the party’s immense delight, many journalists remained in full democratic-crisis mode. I disagree with that, for reasons. - #5 Three and a half Special Issues on (Right-Wing) populism. And then two more
2018 was a horrible year for the world, and hence a good year for Radical Right/Populism research. It showed early on, i.e. in January, with a number of special issues on the topic. - #4 I looked up the AfD’s women’s organisation on Facebook. You will not believe what I found.
I wrote this one on December 30 2017. What can I say? Sometimes, reality imitates art. You will not believe it until you see what I saw. - #3 nlcom and the Delta Method
is another oldie. Written in 2013, it explains how incredibly useful Stata’s nlcom command is if you need e.g. standard errors for ratios. - #2 Me at the Margins: Average Marginal Effects, Marginal Effects at the Mean, and Stata’s margins command
This one turns nine years old next year, but it seems to be useful as people keep coming back to it. - #1 Update: How the AfD ditched Euroscepticism and embraced immigration
This is an update on a high-level content analysis of what Germany’s new Radical Right party posts on Facebook. It shows how the salience of Europe declined and was replaced by nativism and islamophobia.
