2024 Workshops and Tutorials

Workshops

Workshop: Linking Survey and Digital Trace Data

Luke Sloan and Shujun Liu (Cardiff University, UK), Tarek Al Baghal and Paulo Serodio (University of Essex, UK), Curtis Jessop (NatCen Social Research UK)

The workshop will explore the ethical and operational challenges around gaining informed consent for linking survey and social media data. This interactive session will be organized as follows:

1. Sloan will facilitate the session, giving an introduction of the recent work that the team has conducted in this area.
2. Breakout activity: In your experience, what do you think are the key drivers of likelihood to consent to data linkage? Group discussion and feedback.
3. Liu will discuss recent work on the impact of privacy attitudes on consent to data linkage.
4. Breakout activity: Does this align with your own area of research? Open discussion.
5. Al Baghal will discuss an example of gaining consent to link survey panel and LinkedIn data.
6. Breakout activity: Each group will be given a social media platform, and asked to consider whether it would be possible to achieve deterministic or probabilistic linkage. What data would you need to do either? Group activity.
7. Serodio will discuss an example of gaining consent to link survey panel and Twitter data.
8. Breakout activity: Informed consent questions – can you write a better example? Group activity.
9. Jessop will preset qualitative research with the public and that underlying factors that influence the decision to consent.
10. Breakout activity: Using what we’ve just discussed, how could we maximise consent rates? Is there a point at which this becomes unethical?

Workshop: Qualitative User Experience (UX) Research Methods for Social Media Studies

Angela M. Cirucci (Rowan University, USA)

This workshop will help attendees reimagine what academic, qualitative research can look like in the social media studies field. Because social media companies rely on industry-proven methods to create and maintain their apps, it behooves academic researchers to be more in-touch with these methods. The moderator, Dr. Angela Cirucci, as co-authored a textbook on critically adapted qualitative methods, and frequently teaches a related course as a Senior Seminar. Angela has also used variations of the presented methods in her own, published research. The main objectives for this workshop are as follows:

1. Understand how social media industry research methods can be adapted for critical, academic applications;
2. Design and pilot six different social media studies applying critically adapted qualitative UX research methods;
3. Create a working prototype of a social media interface using the popular platform Figma.

Workshop: Understanding Online Conspiracy Communities through Mixed Methods

William Lakin (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK)

The main objectives for this workshop are two-fold:

1. To present the unique insights gained from the thematic analysis of online forum discussions around the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy theory; the analysis focuses on the mechanics of the world building processes that the forum users engage in, and the types of communication and rhetoric used to appeal to like-minded others. It revealed a complex online ecosystem, one in which the forum users fostered a space to express their fears and anxieties, bolster their individual and group identities and construct a preferred, alternative reality.
2. To test the ways in which an art installation using interactive works can stimulate an embodied understanding of the processes of collective narrative construction. These works will be presented in an exhibition space at London College of Communications throughout the conference and take the form of photographs, sculptures and text appropriated from the online discussions around the pizzagate narrative (images of works available on request). The aim of this approach is to engage people in activities designed to provoke the interpretive and narrativising impulses typical of conspiracy culture through interactions with fragmented and ambiguous speech, images and objects.

The workshop will be headed by William Lakin and will be split into three sections: a presentation of the analysis findings on the Pizzagate forum discussions; a period of time to view and interact freely with the artworks; and a period for discussion and feedback at the end. On completion of this workshop the attendees will have gained detailed insight into a case study of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and the world-building processes that conspiracy theorists engage in. These insights pay particular attention to the modes of communication used by this group – the rhetoric and identity-driven dialogue – and what this reveals about the motivations to engage in these practices. The attendees will also have actively engaged in activities which use new, creative and visual methods to communicate these insights. These activities centre around creating a space for an embodied understanding of these insights and propose alternative ways to understand the culture of conspiracy theorising.

Workshop: Reframing Social Media Platforms as Fragile States

Caroline Haythornthwaite (Syracuse University, USA), Philip Mai and Anatoliy Gruzd (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada)

* Due to the space limitation, this workshop is invite-only. For more details on how to apply for this workshop, please visit the workshop page.

Have you noticed how social media platforms behave like independent ‘states’? And have you noticed how fragile they can be compared to other institutions that impact people’s daily lives? As a citizen of a social media state, do you feel like you have input on their rules of behaviour, and equitable representation under the laws of these social states? Are they stable states? Can they support the basics of statehood: to provide services, security and protection for citizens, apply well-defined laws in a fair, equal, and consistent manner, and protect human rights? Or are they fragile, with governance challenged by the continuous need to update and derive new rules and protections driven by internal and external interests? What indicators can be used to assess the stability or fragility of these platforms and these social states?

If you have pondered any of these questions, we invite you to apply and join us in person on the afternoon of July 16, 2024. More details here.

Tutorials

Tutorial: Social Media Research Post-Twitter – Accessing Social Media Data for Quantitative Research

Philip Mai and Anatoliy Gruzd (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada); Felipe Soares (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK)

One door closes, another opens. With Twitter API behind a paywall and Crowdtangle being deprecated by Meta, obtaining social media data for independent research in the public interest is becoming more challenging. This tutorial will show attendees how to systematically collect publicly accessible social media data for academic research via Communalytic. Communalytic is a research tool developed by the Social Media Lab for studying online communities and discourse. The session will include an overview of the available metadata for various social media platforms and a step-by-step guide on how to collect data via platform-provided public APIs – No coding experience is required. By the end of the session, attendees will know how to collect data from the following platforms for their own research projects:

• Bluesky, 
• Mastodon, 
• Reddit, 
• Telegram, and 
• YouTube

Tutorial: Research with the Meta Content Library & API

Christina Fan, Yair Rubinstein, Seulki Kang (Meta)

This session will introduce the audience to the Meta Content Library and demo new data fields and functionalities available in both the user interface (UI) and the API. The hands-on demonstration will deploy research use cases to demonstrate how the data from the API and the UI can be used to shed light on questions related to public interest topics. We will also provide an overview for how individuals and research teams can apply for access to these tools, as well as provide an opportunity to share feedback on our products and services.

Meta Content Library gives researchers comprehensive access to posts, videos, photos, and reels posted to public Pages, Groups, and Events on Facebook. For Instagram, the library includes content from public posts, albums, videos, and photos from personal, creator and business accounts. Robust metadata about each of these data types (e.g. view count, reshares, reactions, etc.) enables in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Tutorial: Analysing Collocations within Large Social Media Datasets

Dan Heaton (University of Nottingham, UK)

The main objectives of the tutorial are to provide practitioners in social media analytics with a deep understanding of corpus linguistics, with a specific focus on collocation analysis. The presenter, an expert in corpus linguistics, will guide participants through the intricacies of collocation and its applications in social media research. Participants can expect to gain proficiency in identifying and analysing collocations within large social media datasets, enabling them to extract meaningful insights from these discourses, particularly focussing on agency and power dynamics. To summarise, this tutorial will: Equip practitioners with advanced skills in corpus linguistics, developing expertise in collocation analysis. Ensure practical proficiency through hands-on exercises. Instil confidence for immediate application of collocation techniques, refining social media analytics with nuanced insights.

Tutorial: Applying Spatial Econometrics to Analyzing Social Media Data

Abby Youran Qin and Wil Meyer Dubree (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

The main objectives of this tutorial are two-fold: (1) introduce spatial-sociological concepts (spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity) to communication scholars, and (2) offer a hands-on tutorial on applying spatial econometrics (including spatial error and lag models and geographically weighted regression) to analyzing social media data. Abby Youran Qin will introduce theoretical and methodological rationales behind spatial analyses and lead the tutorial on spatial econometrics. Wil Meyer Dubree will lead the tutorial on data preparation, especially aggregate-level variable filtering through supervised machine learning. Both will assist participants’ hands-on practices throughout the session. The audience will understand spatial sociology concepts, learn to perform spatial analyses with Python, and learn to incorporate spatial thinking to social media research.