Session Chair: Daniel Angus
Presentation 1
TO SCREENSHOT OR NOT TO SCREENSHOT? TENSIONS IN REPRESENTING VISUAL SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM POSTS
Joseph S. Schafer, Brett A. Halperin, Sourojit Ghosh, Julie Vera
University of Washington, United States of America
The rise to prominence of visual social media platforms (VSMPs) including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube has led to increasing amounts of research attention directed to these platforms. As research engages multimodal platforms, representing their content (including text, audio, image, and video components) increasingly becomes both important and complex. The AoIR Internet Research Ethics (IRE) 3.0 guidelines stipulate that “we need to elaborate an ethics addressing the distinctive issues clustering around the production, sharing, and thereby research on visual images” (franzke et al., 2020). In this paper, we begin making such an elaboration, describing considerations necessary when representing screenshots. We provide an overview of four current approaches to representing VSMP posts and annotate their tensions.
Presentation 2
PROPOSING RECIPROCAL DIGITAL METHODS: A USER-CENTRIC METHOD FOR ALGORITHMIC SOCIAL PLATFORMS IN A POST-API WORLD
Jessica Yarin Robinson, Sebastian Cole
University of Oslo, Norway
This paper introduces reciprocal digital methods, a novel research framework tailored to the exigencies of studying social media in what has been called a post-API landscape (Bruns, 2019; Freelon, 2018). In this paper we build on scholarly discourse on the epistemology and ethics of social media data (Lomborg & Bechmann, 2014; Marres & Gerlitz, 2016), and the current debates about the future of social media research (Bruns, 2019; Freelon, 2018; Ohme & Araujo, 2022; Tromble, 2021). We propose a model that is intended to push the field forward, merging approaches to social media that have been largely disparate, and combining computational analysis of user-level digital trace data and interviews with the same users.
We argue that user perspectives and digital trace data should not be considered as separate methods but as part of a reciprocal exchange and a broader methodological pluralism (Danermark et al., 2019). Digital data, while rich in potential insights, often lacks the context necessary to interpret user behavior and platform interaction accurately. Conversely, interviews provide depth and narrative but are generally not reliable for capturing use patterns. By combining these two elements, the proposed methodology enables researchers to bridge the gap between narrative and pattern, and between media use and media practice. Moreover, we propose that inviting users into the quantitative analysis process can help correct for the noted lack of agency users have had in big data studies (Bishop & Kant, 2023).
Presentation 3
Screenshot methodologies to collect and analyse social media platform advertising
Lauren Hayden(1), Nicholas Carah(1), Brady Robards(2), Amy Dobson(3)
1: The University of Queensland, Australia; 2: Monash University, Australia; 3: Curtin University, Australia
This paper presents three projects where we have developed participatory digital research methods designed to extend observability of digital advertising on social media platforms and engage with users’ individual experiences with digital advertising. In each approach, participants collected instances of digital advertising from social media apps by taking screenshots or using a screen-capture mobile app. Participants also assumed active roles in the interpretation and analysis of the collected ads through dialogue with research teams in the form of SMS chats, surveys and interviews. We then critically reflect on the politics and ethics of participatory screen capture as a method that emerges as a response to ‘platform opaqueness’. Because of the lack of platform transparency, one of the only reliable ways for researchers to study advertising in these spaces is to work directly with users to capture what they see. In our projects, the practice of screenshotting facilitated scaffolded consent as participants chose the images to send and discuss with researchers. These approaches also position participants as experts on their own experience with and theories of algorithmic, digital platform advertising. We conclude by considering the significance of collected data: collections of ads that illustrate the relationships between users and digital advertising models. The ads targeted to individual users reflect platform ad models’ attempts to respond and pre-empt user engagement, and in the process, construct digital subjectivities. By co-analysing digital advertising with users, we observe the ways social media platform users and algorithmic advertising models continuously enact and react to each other.
Presentation 4
‘GUERILLA ANALYSIS’ AND THE INSTITUTIONAL VOICE: THE TELEGRAM’S PRODUCTIVE MESO-SPACE OF CORONAVIRUS VISUALIZATIONS
Eedan Amit-Danhi
University of Groningen,
During the coronavirus pandemic, Israeli Telegram became a staple venue of pandemic news, as the platform served as the Ministry of Health’s primary official output. Over time, Telegram also became home to a community of ‘Guerilla Analysts’ who pooled together their analytical resources to create a ‘National Graph Headquarters’. Utilizing the same data as the MoH channel, this ragtag crew of data-loving laypeople created a space in which data-literacies are shared and developed. Informed by conceptualizations of messaging apps as “news meso-space(s)”, digital collaborative information-making practices, and the notion that visualizations can promote civic deliberation and political empowerment, this paper explores the rhetorical and discursive framework that enabled informational migration and evolution, and the co-production of data-oriented pandemic narratives across both groups, resulting in an exceptionally empowering informational eco-system. It does so by applying qualitative rhetorical visualization analysis to 100 pairs of institutional and guerilla visualizations of the same data, prior to qualitative discourse analysis of 30 related comment threads. Findings reveal that while the ‘Institutional Voice’ remained focused on conservative visualizations of the present and past, guerilla analysts often re-visualize MoH visualizations into predictive narratives, and take bolder swings in proposing actionable implications. While primarily focused on sociable elucidation of complex analyses, comment discourse also challenges and re-visualizes ‘Guerilla’ narratives, further extending informational empowerment. Predominantly conceptualized as a subversive venue, I highlight Telegram as a civic platform and propose a conceptualization of messaging apps as productive and empowering meso-spaces, utilizing common social and analytical resources towards a common good.
