DMRC Monthly Methods workshop series for 2018
Methods workshop #1: The app walkthrough method
Date: 1–3 pm, Tuesday 3 April 2018
Facilitator: Prof. Jean Burgess
Workshop overview: Software applications (apps) are the site of significant sociocultural and economic transformations across many domains, from health and relationships to entertainment and finance. As relatively closed systems, apps pose methodological challenges for digital media research. In this session, we will discuss a new approach, the walkthrough method, which combines cultural studies and science and technology studies (STS) as a lens for critical app analysis. Participants will learn how to establish an app’s environment of expected use by assessing its vision, operating model, and modes of governance. They will also gain hands-on experience using the walkthrough technique to systematically step through the stages of registration, everyday use, and discontinuation to identify the app’s embedded cultural meanings and implied ideal users.
Registration: via Eventbrite
Methods workshop #2: Social media analytics 1: Accessing and analysing Twitter data
Date: 1–4 pm, Tuesday 1 May 2018
Facilitator: Prof. Axel Bruns
Workshop overview: Particularly when working with large social media datasets, quantitative and mixed-methods approaches that draw especially on visual representations of ‘big data’ are now an indispensable part of the scholarly research and publication process. This data analytics and visualisation module focuses on a number of emerging standard tools and methods for large-scale data analytics, using Twitter data to illustrate these approaches. The module introduces participants to the open-source Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolkit (TCAT) as a capable and reliable tool for data gathering from the Twitter API, and to the high-end data analytics software Tableau as a powerful means of processing and visualising large datasets. The skills gained in the module are also transferrable to working with other large datasets from social media and other sources.
Registration: via Eventbrite
Methods workshop #3: Social media analytics 2: Network visualisation using Gephi
Date: 1–4 pm, Tuesday 5 June 2018
Facilitator: Prof. Axel Bruns
Workshop overview: In addition to volumetric and temporal patterns, social media datasets often also describe networks: for instance, of relationships between different terms or issues; or of interactions between different communicative partners. These require a different approach for analysis, involving network visualisation and the calculation of various metrics that highlight key nodes in the network. Using sample data from TrISMA’s Australian Twitter Collection, this workshop utilises the open-source software Gephi to provide an introduction to network mapping. It follows on from the workshop “Social Media Analytics 1: Accessing and Analysing Twitter Data” (held on 1 May 2018), but you do not have to have attended that workshop to participate.
Registration: via Eventbrite.
Methods workshop #4: Multiplatform issue mapping
Date: 1–3 pm, Tuesday 3 July 2018
Facilitator: Ariadna Matamoros Fernández
Workshop overview:Issue Mapping is an advanced method for making sense of the social media conversation around topics where there is a lot of uncertainty or disagreement—from science and the environment to popular culture and gender. In this module, you will use a variety of tools for tracking hashtags and media objects across platforms in order to build an inventory and map of key media objects (including hashtags, URLs and audiovisual texts) and to map the issue networks associated with digital media controversies.
Registration: via Eventbrite
Methods workshop #5: Digital methods, digital ethics
Date: 1–3 pm, Tuesday 31 July 2018
Facilitators: Assoc. Prof. Peta Mitchell and Dr Elija Cassidy
Workshop overview: The expanding horizon of research in digital media has thrown up a broad array of ethical issues and dilemmas that researchers need to grapple with and that institutional ethics review boards may see as particularly challenging. In this workshop, we review existing ethical frameworks for doing digital media research and examine a range of ethical issues that emerge at the levels of method, platform, data, tool, and visualisation. We will focus in on a couple of case studies—including ethical considerations in studying dating apps—and ask workshop participants to discuss the ethical dilemmas their own projects have raised, how they have resolved these dilemmas, and what, if any, challenges they encountered in receiving institutional ethics approval to conduct their research.
Registration: via Eventbrite
Methods workshop #6: Social media analytics 3: Accessing and analysing Facebook public pages
Date: TBA: watch this space!
Facilitator: Prof. Axel Bruns
Workshop overview: TBA
Registration: An Eventbrite link will be posted within two weeks of the workshop.
Methods workshop #7: Ethnographic methods 1: Designing semi-structured interviews and focus groups for digital media research
Date: 1–3 pm, Tuesday 6 November 2018
Facilitator: Assoc. Prof. Michael Dezuanni
Workshop overview: Digital ethnography uses a range of digital and non-digital methods to investigate the use of digital media in everyday life. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups provide well established qualitative methods for generating data, particularly when it is difficult to generate data through observation, participation or other ethnographic methods. In this session, I will discuss using interviews and focus groups, particularly with children and young people about their use of digital platforms including Minecraft and YouTube. I will also conduct a mock focus group interview with a small group of participants about YouTube, followed by a whole group debrief. Participants will also have an opportunity to pair up to conduct a brief semi-structured interview with each other.
Registration: via Eventbrite
Methods workshop #8: Ethnographic methods 2: In-situ, observational, and go-along methods
Date: 1–3 pm, Tuesday 4 December 2018
Facilitator: Assoc. Prof. Peta Mitchell
Workshop overview: TBA
Registration: An Eventbrite link will be posted within two weeks of the workshop.