Researching with Twitter timeline data

A demonstration via "everyday" socio-political talk around welfare provision

Bibliographic Data

ID5260437
AuthorsPhillip Brooker (0000-0003-1189-4647, University of Liverpool, corresponding author), Julie Barnett (0000-0001-5740-0863, University of Bath), John Vines (0000-0003-4051-3356, Northumbria University), Shaun Lawson (0000-0001-8357-0727, Northumbria University), Tom Feltwell (0000-0003-2530-7407, Northumbria University), Kiel Long (0000-0003-0934-0848, Northumbria University), Gavin Wood (0000-0001-7187-2197, Northumbria University)
Year2018
Volume5
Issue1
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBig Data & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2053-9517 • E-ISSN: 2053-9517
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/2053951718766624
OpenAlexW2795580043
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited48

Increasingly, social media platforms are understood by researchers to be valuable sites of politically-relevant discussions. However, analyses of social media data are typically undertaken by focusing on 'snapshots' of issues using query-keyword search strategies. This paper develops an alternative, less issue-based, mode of analysing Twitter data. It provides a framework for working qualitatively with longitudinally-oriented Twitter data (user-timelines), and uses an empirical case to consider the value and the challenges of doing so. Exploring how Twitter users place "everyday" talk around the socio-political issue of UK welfare provision, we draw on digital ethnography and narrative analysis techniques to analyse 25 user-timelines and identify three distinctions in users' practices: users' engagements with welfare as TV entertainment or as a socio-political concern; the degree of sustained engagement with said issues, and; the degree to which users' tweeting practices around welfare were congruent with or in contrast to their other tweets. With this analytic orientation, we demonstrate how a longitudinal analysis of user-timelines provides rich resources that facilitate a more nuanced understanding of user engagement in everyday socio-political discussions online

Data science · Ethnography · Everyday life · Internet privacy · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Social media · Sociology · Timeline · Welfare · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Focus Groups and Qualitative Methods · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Social Media and Politics

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access