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

Tue Apr 24 16:29:05 PDT 2018

I believe you'd find Tom Boellstorff's, "Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A
Handbook of Method" to be helpful, especially regarding your first point.

Chris Julien, MA in Sociology
Greensboro, NC, USA
www.chrisjulien.com

On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 1:06 AM, sky c <skyc at riseup.net> wrote:

> 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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