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

[sky c]

Our chapter on the social movement research we've been doing may be
relevant:

Sky Croeser and Tim Highfield (2015). Mapping Movements – Social
Movement Research and Big Data: Critiques and Alternatives. Compromised
Data From Social Media to Big Data. Bloomsbury.

(Let me know if you have trouble getting hold of a copy).

On Fri, 2018-04-20 at 11:13 +0200, Daniel Kunzelmann wrote:
> 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
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