[Air-L] Social Media as ethnographic source (algorithms, publicness, ethics, etc.)

[Daniel Kunzelmann]

Dear community,

I'm writing on a chapter about *using social media as an ethnographic
source*. I'm trying *to understand such media from a social/cultural
anthropological point of view*. It's mainly questions about methodology,
epistemology, operationalization, ethics, etc. Before I come to my
questions let me give you some context.

Concretely, when I talk about social media, in my research I am refering
to Facebook. For me, using social media (in my case Facebook) as a
source means more than "just" analyzing content that people in my field
keep sharing (symbols, discourses, etc.). Foremost, social media usage
is practice, it is a "doing". By this I mean someone, a person (or a
bot), is typing something, sharing something, commenting on something,
etc. And this someone has relations within a group, he/she has a history
and a context (as does his/her group). These relations, history and
contexts have to be considered when analyzing social media usage. Then,
this whole social media practice is also embedded into an algorithmic
network as I would call it. So the person is not only interacting with
other individuals, but also with an algorithm that delivers the networks
content to him/her resp. that delivers his/her content to the network.
When doing (ethnographic) research in any field where social media is
used (again, in my case Facebook), I think we need to keep this
social-technological context in mind.

Now, here come the questions / doubts...

1.) Do you know of any *("ethnographic-driven") overviews on how to use
social media**(activity) as empirical material?* Any text that gives a
summary about the diverse approaches a qualitative researcher might use
when dealing with social media (usage) in his/her field? Such overviews
might come from social/cultural anthropology, but I'm also open to other
qualitative (sub-)disciplines.

2.) A first specific problem I then have is about how to deal with
*privacy/publicness issues and their ethics* (privacy settings of social
media, etc.). Any literature about this would be highly appreciated. My
stance would be:

  * that a "public" post is a public post meaning I can and will use its
    content like any other public source (of course there are always
    exceptions).

  * a "friend's only" post, in contrast, I would treat the same way I
    would treat any information that I have gathered during participant
    observation, which means I would apply the same ethical standards
    (let people know I do research, anonymization when using material,
    in some circumstances official consent agreements, etc.)

  * and a "private" message is a private message. When I want to use its
    content I will have to always specifically ask the person who sent
    me the message.

Just to be clear: of course you may challenge me on "my" stance (maybe
using some literature to back your arguments) :) I'm very happy to being
convinced otherwise! "My" stance seems kind of a trade-off between
ethics and usability...

3.) Any ideas on *how to integrate, **from a (practical) point of view,
the whole algorithmic aspect*?

  * "(Practically)" in parenthesis because I'm interest in literature
    that actually tells me how to qualitatively research "algorithmic
    networks" like Facebook. The question is how to research or take
    into account the algorithms or algorithmic effects/aspects that seem
    mostly invisible when researchers and users use social media. But
    since I'm very desperate about *finding such **"practical"
    approaches* ("first you need to do this, then...")...

  * I would also be happy to find literature that at least reflects on
    the problems that algorithms produce for a researcher. I give you
    one example on such problems: a lot of my colleagues use their
    social media accounts to "get" material from other users or to have
    a look who shares what ("person xy just shared event z"). They use
    social media as some sort of empirical quarry. Dig, and dig, and
    dig... However, every individual sees different things on their
    screens when e.g. using Facebook: 10 interfaces = 10 realities. Not
    that I believe in purely "objective" and "neutral" research, but
    with social media and algorithms the methodological claim to e.g.
    use a methodology that might be reproduced by other researchers in
    order to then be able to get the same results, such a claim is just
    impossible to hold up when dealing with "algorithmic networks". *Any
    literature that reflects on such epistemological and/or
    methodological problems when dealing with algorithmic social media
    networks would be highly appreciated!*

4.) *How is one to deal with the **information / ethnograhic
overload**social media produce? *As you be might familiar: every link
leads to another link and so on and so forth. The empirical material
that I am able to "discover" is (metaphorically) killing me, and it is
(literally) killing my software (MAXQDA, etc.). Any text about how to
deal with this? My stance: first, I have to consider (and reflect on)
that my field has to deal with the same kind of problems with this
never-ending social media material that I have. This will already tell
me something about my field. And second, loosely refering to A-N-T, I
would consider that I, being the researcher, am the one who will open
and close the black boxes I want to understand. It would be something
like an "I-am-my-field" kind of approach if you know what I mean. This
means that I decide if a link (to a video or a newspaper article) is
still part of my field. I will open such connections until the point
where I stop. Such a stance, of course, cannot be arbitrary, but refers
to "older" methodological concepts like "saturation" or "relevance"
(with regards to ones research question, etc.). I don't know if ANTish
researchers have any literature about this sort of operationalization
("the link as a black box", etc.). And of course, I also welcome
different approaches on how to, methodologically, deal with this big
social media mess maybe refering to such "older" methodological concepts
like "saturation" or "relevance" that I have just mentioned.

5.) Last but not least, any literature on researchers that treat
*"social media as an archive"* meaning they *apply a historical approach
to social media's methodologies*? I know I wrote that social media is a
practice. But researching social media also seems to have kind of
parallel to doing research in an archive (with algorithms, admins, etc.
being the gatekeepers, etc.). We might also consider its content as
"congealed practice". I think one might find a fruitful approach
applying historical methods and/or reflecting on them when dealing with
social media as an ethnographic source. Maybe someone has already done
it :) If you can't think of anyone any brief and good texts about doing
(ethnographic) research in an archive in general? Since I haven't done
this kind of research until now.

As I've done it before I will collect all your answers here so everyone
may find a (complete) literature list:
https://danielderkunzelmann.piratenpad.de/socialmediaethnography. Feel
free to also put your stuff directly in there, and of course, check it
once in a while :) Any names, literature, keyword, etc... Feel also free
to only address 1 or 2 questions, or even to add more questions. I will
try to copy and other questions (and possible answers) to the "pad" too.

As always, thanks a lot for all your ideas. I'm already excited to hear
what you suggest!

all the best from Munich (Germany),
Daniel
https://unibas.academia.edu/DanielKunzelmann