Data Studies 2021 // S09. Research Issues

Pablo Velasco pablov.me & Midas Nouwens // Information Studies

Plan for the day:

1. mini-project aftermath
2. Issues/challenges of (digital) research
3. An example of questionable research
4. Formulating a research question
5. Term project basics

mini-PROJECT

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lm-VFRo=/?invite_link_id=434428915736

1. What was the most (internally (i.e., coming from them)/externally (i.e., coming from the outside world)) challenging aspect of the mini-project?

2. What was the most surprising aspect of the project?

3. How confident are you that what you 'found' in the data is an accurate reflection of 'reality'?

4. If there is one thing you could tell yourself before starting the mini-project, what would it be?

MENTI: https://www.menti.com/ko3pe6mwkz

code "9992 6280"

ISSUES OF (DIGITAL) RESEARCH

• Digital technologies enable new practices for recording, analyzing, and visualizing social life.
  Fielding, N. G. (2008). The Internet as Research Medium.

• optimistic (e.g. Latour via Tarde's sociology) and pesimistic approaches (e.g. Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2007). The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology. Sociology)

The computational turn

Berry, D. M. (2011). The Computational Turn: Thinking About the Digital Humanities

Importance of devices as both:

• the materials of social life
• the apparatuses to know it

Ruppert, E., Law, J., & Savage, M. (2013). Reassembling social science methods: The challenge of digital devices

"These [computational] subtractive methods of understanding reality (episteme) produce new knowledges and methods for the control of reality (techne)"

Berry, D. M. (2011). The Computational Turn: Thinking About the Digital Humanities

Need to develop methodological frameworks to reflexively account for the strengths and weaknesses of both the technical practices and the claims produced through computational systems

Elish, M. C., & boyd, danah. (2018). Situating methods in the magic of Big Data and AI. Communication Monographs

That is, methods indicate not only the application of computational/statistical methods to social/humanistic/cultural fields, but a also a contestation of the pertinence of such methods and methodological devices, as well as a reflection on their effects in social research

a. EMBRACE medium/platform-effects

Medium/platforms have their own implicit epistemologies and ontologies (what can be and what how it can be known), thus a methodological approach requires a high degree of criticism and adaptation.

Not (only) what digital devices reveal, but how they produce and perform the social, asking for example, not:

Which percentage of twitter users believe in x?

but

How digital practices & objects (of twitter) ground cultural representations/expressions of x?

b. INTEGRATE digital culture and #vernaculars

c. COMBINE quant -> qual

• issue/controversy mapping: controversy analysis + issue crawling + community detection) with TCAT + gephi

"quantitative curation for qualitative analysis"
(btw, see this Friday lecture)

d. DEAL WITH cross-media

digital objects use is not equivalent across platforms

how does the platform affect the availability of content, and what stories do the content tell, given platform effects?"
Rogers, R. (2019). Doing Digital Methods. SAGE Publications Ltd.

This question is even more relevant with the emergence of alt-platforms (parler, mastodon, "truth").

A GOOD EXAMPLE OF BAD RESEARCH

Safra, L., Chevallier, C., Grèzes, J., & Baumard, N. (2020). Tracking historical changes in trustworthiness using machine learning analyses of facial cues in paintings

1. Algorithm (machine learning) to generate trustworthyness ratings (based on facial cues) - (trained on OpenFace avatars)
2. Validity tested on natural faces databases of photography (originally rated by participants)
3. Not an evaluation directly with participants, to avoid bias of being influenced by historical cues
4. Check that algorithm is susceptible to the same biases as humans (rating "feminine" faces as more trustworthy)
5. Replicates the findings on google image searches ("women portraits" vs "male portraits")
6. RESULT: trustworthyness increased throughout history ("parallel" to the "rise of liberal values")
7. RESULT: trustworthyness increases with afluence (poor people "should" have lower levels of social trust) - (not afluence of individuals, but GDP per capita)

RESEARCH QUESTION 101

42

The "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything"
Calculated over a period of 7.5 million years
(The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

• “O Deep Thought Computer,” he said, “the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us…” he paused, “… the Answer!”
• “The answer?” said Deep Thought. “The answer to what?”
• “Life!” urged Fook.
• “The Universe!” said Lunkwill.
• “Everything!” they said in chorus.
• Deep Thought paused for a moment’s reflection.
• “Tricky,” he said finally.
  (…)
• “Forty-two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?”
• “I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”
• “But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!” howled Loonquawl.
• “Yes,” said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, “but what actually is it?”

Latex ninja: https://latex-ninja.com/2020/03/29/formulating-research-questions-for-using-dh-methods/

Final project