Post on 06-May-2015
description
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/