What’s next for #AcademicTwitter?
by Janet Salmons, Research Community Manager for SAGE Methodspace
Dr. Salmons is the author of Doing Qualitative Research Online, which focuses on ethical research and writing, and What Kind of Researcher Are You? which focuses on researcher integrity. Use the code MSPACEQ422 for a 20% discount, valid until December 31, 2022.
Twitter Dilemmas!
This Academic Writing Month we have a new challenge. Many of us have found #AcWriMo on Twitter to be a place where we enjoyed support, encouragement, and a friendly way to commiserate with others about the joys and frustrations of doing academic research and writing about it. Twitter has been a place where we’ve shared links to new publications, and learned about each other’s work (and life) events.
Some of us have used Twitter as a research site, observing interactions, collecting data directly, or analyzing the Big Data flow from Twitter API.
All of these activities have been called into question with the recent purchase by Elon Musk and immediate dismissal of management and employees. Of great concern is the lax attitude towards content moderation for hate speech and extremist views. We don’t know yet how it will change, but it is clear that Twitter is changing. Some of us are exiting (I’ve closed my @einterview account) and others are staying and trying to carry on as usual. A number of academics are migrating to Mastodon, or are shifting more of their social media activity to other platforms.
While mulling these changes and potential implications, a post from Dr. Stu Shulman to the Association of Internet Researchers’ email list caught my attention. Stu, an experienced Twitter researcher, raised important questions and brought up troubling trends at play before the Musk transition:
I was unfamiliar with some of these tactics and wanted to learn more. I also wanted to share his perspectives with Methodspace readers. Stu was willing to meet, and you can listen to our conversation below. Given that it is difficult to discuss these issues without mentioning the political context for Twitter, keep in mind that the views expressed are our own.
For some background, Stu Shulman is a trail-blazing social media researcher, and the founder and CEO of Textifter, LLC. Dr. Shulman has been the Principal Investigator and Project Director on 10 National Science Foundation-funded research projects focusing on electronic rulemaking, human language technologies, manual annotation, digital citizenship, and service-learning efforts in the United States.
More Methodspace Posts about Online Research
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Jessica Lester and Trena Paulus co-edited a December 2023 special issue for the Sage journal, Qualitative Inquiry, “Qualitative inquiry in the 20/20s: Exploring methodological consequences of digital research workflows.” Read the articles and watch a roundtable with contributors. This is the second of two discussions of the special issue.
Jessica Lester and Trena Paulus co-edited a December 2023 special issue for the Sage journal, Qualitative Inquiry, “Qualitative inquiry in the 20/20s: Exploring methodological consequences of digital research workflows.” Read the articles and watch a roundtable with contributors. This is the first of two discussions of the special issue.
Use research cases as the basis for individual or team activities that build skills.
How can you study digital culture and activism? Watch this interview with Dr. Lyndon Wray.
Want to learn more about research with datasets? This curated collection of open-access articles can help you understand defining characteristics, and develop data literacy skills needed to work with large datasets and machine learning tools for managing Big Data sources.
Learn about ethics and consent for online research from the perspective of an institutional review board member.
Learn about research with online Experiments from Dr. Giuseppe Veltri.
Speakers at SICSS-Howard/Mathematica 2022 explore how change does not affect populations equally, and how the exclusion of underrepresented communities can perpetuate social injustice.
What ethical issues face researchers who study online comments? Paul J. Reilly offers explanations and an open-access research case.
Hear Dr. Kozinets discuss the origins and development of Netnography in this interview. See the whole series of posts from Kozinets about collecting data for studies using netnography.
View a recorded webinar with Dr. Janet Salmons, Research Community Manager for Methodspace and author of Doing Qualitative Research Online, Dr. Stacy Penna, Customer Engagement and Enablement Director for Lumivero (previously NVivo, and Leon Bourner, Director of Sales and Client Development for itracks.
Learn how computational social sciences help scholars to renew their research in several directions.
Online researchers face design challenges because they must also consider the implications of the technologies used in the study. By using an iterative, holistic approach, you can look inter-related dimensions of the design.
Do you think about research questions as an insider, outsider, or somewhere in between? Why is positionality important in online research?