ITRM 2021 // Week 6 - Digital Methods 1

Dieter et al (2021). Pandemic platform governance: Mapping the global ecosystem of COVID-19 response apps. Internet Policy Review, 10(3)

Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // pablov.me

Topics for the day:

• Digital methods: reminder + epistemological claims + main characteristics
• Walkthrough method: cultural analysis of apps
• APP studies: multi situated methods for studying apps

DIGITAL METHODS

(a reminder + epistemological claims & approaches)

Relation between the digital and the social, but not exactly:

• data science: statistical approach to data
• computational sociology: analysis and modeling of social phenomena
• digital humanities: computational techniques for humanities research
• cultural analytics: computational techniques to study cultural practices

Digital Methods (big umbrella)

• Digital methods: “the use of online and digital technologies to collect and analyse research data"
  Snee et al (2016). Digital methods for social science

• Snee et al include:

  • web-based surveys
    Dillman, D. A. (2011). Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method
  • online interviewing and focus groups
    Kazmer, M. M., & Xie, B. (2008). Qualitative Interviewing in Internet Studies: Playing with the media, playing with the method
  • computer mediated discourse-analysis
    Herring, S. C. (2004). Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis
  • digital ethnographies e.g. virtual ethnography
    Hine, C. (2000). Virtual Ethnography

Redistribution of methods

Marres, N. (2012). The redistribution of methods: On intervention in digital social research, broadly conceived

• 4 views on the redistribution of methods (along a spectrum):

  • methods as usual: old social methodologies incorporated into digital devices (e.g. online interviews)
  • big-methods: vast datasets allow us to perform large-scale analysis on real network dynamics
  • virtual methods: adaptation of the social research methods into the digital (e.g. interviews about digital communities)
  • digital methods: adapt digital devices for the purposes of social research and identify the epistemology embedded in such devices

• redistribution of research: not so much an opposition between IT firms and researchers (e.g. Savage and Burrows 2007), but a reconfiguration of agents in social research (concepts, technical practices, tools, etc)

"Developing the methodological frameworks to reflexively account for the strengths and weaknesses of both the technical practices and the claims that can be produced through machine learning-based systems"

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

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

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

"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

Roberson, D., Davidoff, J. B., Davies, I., & Shapiro, L. (2006). Colour categories and category acquisition in Himba and English. In N. Pitchford & C. P. Biggam (Eds.), Progress in Colour Studies (pp. 159–172). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Digital Methods Initiative

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase

Digital object: hyperlink

Brin, S., & Page, L. (1998). The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine.

DMI tool: Issuecrawler

https://issuecrawler.net

Digital object: hashtag

Early use: IRC(Internet Relay chat)

importance of digital culture and vernaculars

mixed methods

Johnson, R. B., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Turner, L. A. (2007). Toward a Definition of Mixed Methods Research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research"

quant-qual

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

"quantitative curation for qualitative analysis"

embrace medium/platform-effects

Medium/platforms becomes its own field with 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, for example, if 45% percent of twitter users believe in x, but how local practices, such as retweets, provide online groundedness for x cultural representations/expressions)

cross-media

a. cross-media: e.g. same story on different platforms
b. transmedia: story unfolding differently across platform

Jenkins, H. (2015). Transmedia Storytelling: Die Herrschaft des Mutterschiffes. In New Media Culture: Mediale Phänomene der Netzkultur (pp. 237–256). transcript Verlag.

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").

WALKTHROUGH: cultural/semiotic analysis of apps

"a combination of science and technology studies with cultural studies"

Light, B., Burgess, J., & Duguay, S. (2018). The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps. New Media & Society

• questions:
  • which discursive/symbolic representations are present in the app?
  • how it can be used and by whom?

Vision

• what:
  • purpose
  • target user
  • scenarios of use
• where:
  • materials: documentation, description, stock photos, etc

Operating model

• what:
  • business strategy
  • revenue sources
  • public/private funding
• where:
  • Public market information (e.g. Crunchbase, Linkedin?)
  • News
  • Public statements
  • In-app purchase

Governance

• what:
  • rules, guidelines (see Dieter covid19)
• where:
  • App descriptions
  • ToS/ToA
  • Internet Archive's Wayback machine

Smitte|stop documentation on developers

"technical" walkthrough

!

• registration and entry
• everyday use
• app suspension, closure, and leaving

!

Follows UI/UX walkthroughs, but considering cultural/ ideologies present in the visual representations

Facebook gender fields circa 2014. Photo by Lauren F. Klein (Data Feminism ch.4)

Bivens, R. (2017). The gender binary will not be deprogrammed: Ten years of coding gender on Facebook.

Limitations of walkthroughs: disconnection between the interface (cultural discourse) and the technological infrastructure

APP STUDIES: multi-situated methods

multi-sited (ethnography)

• follow the people
• follow the thing
• follow the metaphor
• follow the plot, story, or allegory
• follow the life or biography
• follow the conflict

Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 25.

"Skrei" -> baccalà mantecato

• "site" is never local, is always multisited (e.g. food in the world, taste travelled)
• how methods are produced, how far can they travel (transportable)
• "you get different objects when you use different methods"
• Methods need to be invented along the way, tailored, adapted.
  Mol, A. (2009, February 5). What methods do: Evocative questions and difficult audiences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WSQQNuAQc

multi-situated

concrete software objects, but continually transformed

Methodological "entry points" for studying apps

1. app stores

(see jupyter notebook ITRM21 and ITRM21_nodejs)

• organisational logic of stores (what is "health" according to the app store?)
• rules for sorting and distribution
• categorisation (genres) of apps
• developer ecologies
• curation/removal
• ranking
• tools:
  • python/javascript (small intro guide to jupyter notebooks)
  • exodus app information (useful to compare apps, e.g. versions): https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/

2. interfaces

• walkthrough
• research persona
• multi-sidedness: user, developer, etc

Dieter, M., Gerlitz, C., Helmond, A., Tkacz, N., van der Vlist, F. N., & Weltevrede, E. (2019). Multi-Situated App Studies: Methods and Propositions. Social Media + Society, 5(2)

3. packages

• APK mirror: https://www.apkmirror.co
• f-droid FOSS app store: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/
• DMI app tracker explorer: https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/appTrackers/

4. connections

• e.g. PCAP android:

Activity

(groups)

MIRO board: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lnOSZKY=/?invite_link_id=514222049532

1. Discuss what is "health"-related apps:
   • where does this term comes from?
   • do we depart from a "structural" definition?
   • do we let it be "grounded" in empirical data?
2. Select an entry point to study "health" apps (one or many)
3. Apply (briefly) some of the methods proposed by Light et al (2018) and Dieter et al (2019)
4. How does your approach accounts for methodological concerns for digital research (e.g. multi-sited, multi-situated, multi-sided, infrastructure, medium-specificity, platform-effects, cross- and trans-media, etc)?
5. Create at least one miro "slide" to present the former points.

MAIN ASSIGNMENT 3
(Digital Methods research proposal)