Researcher conceptions of Twitter and their impact on methodological approaches
Kate Green
Public
Seen by 302
It seems to me, from discussions within our CDT, that the assumptions that underpin our view of twitter have serious implications for a researcher's approach to the ethics of using twitter data.
The basic idea, following ethical approval, would be to get researchers from different CDTs in the DEN network to discuss how they view twitter: public place, private space, something in between, and how they would approach collecting data from twitter.
This workshop would be orientated towards analysing the data (transcripts?) from these conversations (probably thematic analysis?). It'd be suited to attendees with an interest in qualitative methods.
The ultimate aim would be to produce a paper on this topic for publication.
Obviously it would involve work before the summer school (i.e. the arranging of focus groups, agreeing format between researchers, typing up transcripts) and after (writing up the paper). But there's a few of us involved this could be a really exciting bit of research!
Anyone interested? Need any clarification?
Nikolai Gad Sat 2 Apr 2016 11:27AM
Sounds really interesting! What kind of data were you thinking of when you say discussions among researchers? Interviews? Or more sort of participant led focus groups? And should the participants be senior researchers, phd's or maybe just a mix of both?
Shauna Concannon Sat 2 Apr 2016 1:59PM
Hi this sounds really interesting. I work with Twitter data a lot and do a combination of qualitative driven corpus studies and some machine learning work. I'm currently looking at how people discuss patient care on Twitter. I think the issue around ethics is an interesting one and it engages with questions about access. I had an interesting time with the Facebook API recently and what it allows you to access not correlating with what is publicly available and thinking about why this is... Also finding myself slightly surprised by what information people share so publicly on social media. I think this can be more shocking in facebook with people posting pictures of newborn babies and geo-tagging the hospital and having it come up on a public search.
Not sure how well suited my skill set is for the qualitative approach of the workshop but would be keen to follow what you come up with!
Kate Green Mon 4 Apr 2016 8:36AM
Hey @shaunaconcannon, glad you're interested! Perhaps instead of using this session for data analysis we could discuss our experiences as researchers that use SNS and observations about how other researchers conceptualise/approach twitter data, with a view to future collaborations?
Also the difference between Facebook's API and publicly available data sounds fascinating.....
Kate Green Mon 4 Apr 2016 8:39AM
@nikolaigad I'd imagined a focus group method, with participants being students from different centres in the DEN network (being that we're supposed to be on the forefront of digital economy research). Semi-structured in nature so that the various researchers taking part would run similar data collection exercises.
But very open to thoughts and suggestions: nothing is fixed!
Nikolai Gad Fri 8 Apr 2016 5:05PM
Sounds good. I really like the idea of bringing some data and do analysis together at the workshop - maybe including some methods training at the beginning of the workshop? Twitter data might not be my main interest though, but I can think of a few people who might be interested in this. I'll try to get them involved.
Helen Rice Sat 16 Apr 2016 11:02AM
I'm definitely interested in this.
Angelika Strohmayer · Sat 2 Apr 2016 11:16AM
This sounds like a really good idea - I've had some of these questions myself as I'm thinking of doing some work with twitter :)