From Network Analysis to Network Sensibilities: Part I

(First  of a four-part essay on my recent thoughts about using a network perspective in qualitative studies of internet-related contexts) Maybe it’s the pretty pictures generated by big data. Maybe it’s the impulse to unfocus the analytic gaze from location to locomotion. Whatever. The question that prompted me to start thinking about network analysis went something like this:  “Could network analysis offer something that another method or lens couldn’t?”  My immediate response was to answer simply: “No.”  As a tool for identifying elements of a system, network analysis works well. As a method for understanding meaning in context, it has always been inadequate, at best. From an interpretive or poststructuralist ethnographic standpoint,...

Read More