Symbolic Interaction, Network Analysis, and Social Media
Simon Lindgren and I have finally finished a draft of a new article. Forthcoming, after revisions, in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, volume 39 (anticipated 2012). Any comments welcome! Here’s a PDF of the draft copy. Abstract Below: In spite of the seeming incompatibility of network analysis and a symbolic interaction approach, we have both been drawn to some of the possibilities offered by a network sensibility. When the tools are separated from the disciplinary parameters for which they were developed (primarily Social Network Analysis, or SNA), a network sensibility offers a beguiling method for extending certain approaches, such as grounded theory, symbolic interactionism, or ethnography, and specifying other approaches, such as actor network theory...
Read MoreFair use of images in scholarly publishing
Fair use of images in scholarly publishing is an important issue to put on the front burner. As Patricia Aufderheide and her colleagues at American University’s Center for Social Media remind us, confusion about copyright and fair use creates a culture of fear. As a consequence, many publishers require copyright permissions for the use of any and all images in scholarly articles and authors likewise avoid using images. I recently encountered this issue for an article I was writing. I wanted to use some images I found in various places on the web to illustrate network analysis techniques. I considered these images to be necessary to make my argument. I reasoned that as academics, we need to be able to use whatever evidence is necessary to support our...
Read MoreDramaturgical Approach: What’s different about digital experience?
I’m working on a chapter on Dramaturgy and Digital Experience and I’m working out how to structure the frame for the piece. I thought it might be useful to brainstorm here, as well as talk about the key question for me, which is: What makes digital experience different from everyday life in the 21st Century? Frankly, this would have been an easier chapter to write twenty years ago, when performative aspects of digital experience were more novel, more on the screen, and involved more virtuality. Now, of course, the digital is interwoven into everyday life through a range of devices and interfaces. As Turkle aptly noted back in 1995, what might have been called “life on the screen” has been thoroughly transformed into “life in...
Read MorePart IV: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern
(From network analysis to network sensibilities: Part IV) Part I Part II Part III Part IV here The study of networks is not just the study of how things are connected. It is a way of rethinking what we identify as the object of analysis. Breaking it down to such a level may seem to oversimplify network analysis, but from a methodological perspective, this actually enables us to build the framework pragmatically from the ground up. Arguably, social media are changing the way we experience the world. What we consider self, structure, and ‘the social’ are far more temporal and ad hoc than fixed. Whether or not this is the case or anything radically new, social media help us see how our research contexts are not pre-existing milieus but an assemblage of elements...
Read MorePart III: Moving beyond the discrete to study the space of flows
(From network analysis to network sensibilities: Part III) Part I Part II Part III here Moving beyond the discrete to study the space of flows Consider some of the persistent notions that arise in multiple disciplines over the past few decades: That what we consider an organization is a momentary freezing of flux and transformation (Morgan, 1986), which we can only identify through retrospective sensemaking (Weick, 1969); that space is the crystallization of time (Castells, 1996, p. 411); that the ‘individual,’ far from being a universal concept (e.g., Strathern, 1992), is one that is only understood in terms of relation and interaction (e.g., Blumer, 1969); or that both micro or macro elements of ‘the social,’ such as individuals and institutions,...
Read MorePart II: Network Sensibilities as Generative Tool
(From network analysis to network sensibilities: Part II) Part I Part II here Part III Network Sensibilities as Generative Tool Most directly, network analysis strategies promote visual mapping of key elements (nodes), connections between them, and the overall structure of the system. This type of visualization can be used in generative ways throughout a study. By generative, I include the processes of generating data, generating organizational strategies for one’s data, generating multiple analytic coding schemes or categories, and generating links between levels such as local/global, relational/structural, and so forth. While the focus may be primarily directed toward the phenomenon, it is equally beneficial to use network sensibilities to map one’s own...
Read MoreFrom 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 Moretwitter feed
- listening to fab talk on collage as qualitative analysis at #ICQI13 by Teri Holbrook. Wish network was better-i'd tweet pithy quotes
- listening to fabulous talk on collage as qualitative analysis at #ICQI by Teri Holbrook. Wish network was better--i'd tweet pithy quotes
- wow, not much tweets of #ICQI13 --maybe a different hashtag? or just not a twitter-ish conference?