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, 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. (shrink)

Examines theism versus atheism as depicted in the re-imagined sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica.

This chapter contains section titled: “A Rational Universe Explained Through Rational Means” “That Is Sin. That Is Evil. And You Are Evil” “You Have a Gift, Kara… And I'm Not Gonna Let You Piss That Away” “The Gods Shall Lift Those Who Lift Each Other” “You Have to Believe in Something” Notes.

Upshot: We focus on the following issues: our intentions behind establishing the new Research Through Design conference series; epistemological concerns around “research through design”; and how we might find a balance between openness and specificity for the conference series going forward.

Context: Practice-based design research is becoming more widely recognized in academia, including at doctoral level, yet there are arguably limited options for dissemination beyond the traditional conference format of paper-based proceedings, possibly with an exhibition or “demonstrator” component that is often non-archival. Further, the opportunities afforded by the traditional-format paper presentations is at times at odds with practice-based methodologies being presented. Purpose: We provide a first-hand descriptive account of developing and running a new international conference with an experimental format that (...) aims to support more analogously the dissemination of practice-based design research. Method: Our approach herein is broadly interpretative, phenomenological and critically reflective in orientation, to analyze our own experiential insights from the conference conception, through to the event itself and post-conference reflections, alongside the reflections fed back by conference delegates. Results: We have found the roundtable format continues to function well for creating a discursive interactional context. However issues arose around the crucial nature of the session chair’s role in enabling rich and multi-voiced discussion and how presenters’, organizers’ and delegates’ voices were captured and documented, with implications for further developing the conference design. Looking forward, there are also questions raised about: balancing the stringency of a rigorous review process with provision of an encouraging platform for early-career researchers; and balancing the need for clear criteria and formatting standards with the “openness” of the submission template and formatting guidelines and/or writing. This includes designers who are new to research cultures. It should also appeal to those working in interdisciplinary research in collaboration with design practitioners (but who may not be practitioners themselves. The conference aims to foster and support a burgeoning “research through design” academic community and to provide a fitting dissemination platform for this community. We hope that the conference will encourage academic communities to give proper consideration to the concept of design as a knowledge-generating activity. Constructivist content: Knowledge about design research is generated from meaningful interaction between people and artifacts as part of the unfolding conference experience. The organizational features of the conference aim to support knowledge dissemination through dialogical relations between people and things in particular contexts of interaction. (shrink)

While there is an increasing focus on the use of online networks among autistic users, how autistic adults communicate in social networking sites remains underexplored. The article puts forward an argument for combining systematic observation of digital practices with analysis of evaluative language in order to provide a situated account of ‘autistic sociality’ in social media. Drawing on practice-based theories of social media affordances and discourse analysis research on online self-presentation and affiliation we show how autistic Twitter users rely on (...) association, content persistence and editability in order to signal social engagement through different forms of interaction and alignment. We discuss how the proposed framework can provide a new perspective on communicative practices of autistic social media users and advance development of inclusive digital networking platforms. (shrink)