searching for the ‘material’ of Twitter discussion events

Open online spaces of learning

Overview

Background to the study The research site Pattern seeking data Where it’s leading

Background

How is professional identity negotiated and performed? What are the dynamics of professional community formation?

Background

Mul$modal/  mediated  discourse  analysis    

ac$on  occurs  in  nexus  of  words,  objects,  histories  and  storyline          

   Image  from  Paul  Randall,  2009    

Norris  &  Jones  2005;  Halliday  1994;  Fairclough  2003;  Roger  2011;  Baym  2009  

Background

Tweets Replies User Mentions Retweets Hashtags

“platforms” (Purohit et al

(2013) supporting emergence of coherence between Tweets &

generation of conversational structure

Background

… to co-create a fluid and dynamic

structure within the tweet timeline that facilitates information discovery: anyone searching for the hashtag can see what everyone else is saying about this topic

(Procter, Vis & Voss 2013: 198).

#  

What  are  the  dynamics  of  professional  community  forma$on    

Image  from  Brad  Ovenell-­‐Carter  at  hSps://flic.kr/p/ccGhuh    

What  are  the  dynamics  of  professional  community  forma$on    

General Statistics

Key metrics (Bruns & Steiglitz 2013)

Temporal

Word frequencies

Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.

Chris Anderson, Wired in Williamson 2014

But …

But …

As a research term, ‘data’ has been a problem for qualitative researchers for some decades now, not least because the term is — in most common usage — associated with some thing that one gathers, hence is a priori and collectable. Data are potentially informational, yes, but as operationalized in most of the social or natural sciences, function fundamentally as discrete objects that can be located in time and space. The problem with this conceptualization is that it remains categorically different from — and in a sense opposed to — the very idea of process. From a qualitative perspective, ‘data’ poorly capture the sensation of a conversation or a moment in context.

(Markham 2013: 1)

and …

References

Baym, N.K. (2009). A Call for Groundingi the Face of Blurred Boudaries. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 14: 720-723

Halliday, M.A.K. (1994). Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold

Introna, L.D. (2007). Towards a post-human intra-actional account of socio-technical ahency (and morality). Prepared for the Moral Agency and Technical Artefacts. Scientific Workshop – NIAS Hague, 10-12 May.

Markham, A. N. (2013). Undermining ‘data’: A critical examination of a core term in scientific inquiry. First Monday. 18 (10).

Markham, A.N. and Lindgren, S. (2012). From Object to Flow: Network sensibility, symbolic interactionism and social media. Studies in Symbolic Interaction

Norris, S. and Jones, R.H. (2005). Discourse in action: introducing mediated discourse analysis. London: Routledge

Roger, R. (ed). (2011). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. 2nd edition. London: Sage

Thurlow, Crispin. and Mroczek, Kristine. (2011). Digital discourse: language in the new media. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Van Leeuwen, Theo. (2008). Discourse & Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Williamson, B. 2014. The death of the theorist and the emergence of data and algorithms in digital social research. LSE Impact of Social Sciences, 10 February 2014: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/02/10/the-death-of-the-theorist-in-digital-social-research/