The paper explores building profiles of newsgroups from a corpus of Usenet e-mail messages, employing some standard statistical techniques as well as fuzzy clustering methods. A large set of data from a number of newsgroups has been analysed to elicit some text attributes, such as number of words, length of sentences and other stylistic characteristics. Readability scores have also been obtained by using recognised assessment methods. These text attributes were used for building newsgroups' profiles. Those profiles are compared with corresponding profiles of the whole sample and also with those of a group of frequent participants in the newsgroups.
Fuzzy clustering is used for creating two-dimensional profiles of the same groups.
An attempt is made to identify the newsgroups by defining centres of data clusters. It is contended that this approach to newsgroups' profile analysis could facilitate a better understanding of computer-mediated communication on the Usenet, which is a growing medium of informal business and personal correspondence. This communication has traditionally been paper-based, but information technology may offer some advantages. The aims of this study were to survey the use of the World Wide Web by LAs, to identify the reasons for its adoption, the benefits and disadvantages, and the types of information being disseminated by this means. The survey was conducted by questionnaire, sent to 161 LAs, mainly by electronic mail.