Tags and Codes

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After reading Postill and Pink’s article, titled Social Media Ethnography: The Digital Researcher in a Messy Web, I’m more aware of the distinct need to tag and code research in different ways. This article brings up two key elements that are important to remember.

  1. There are five routines that I participate in that produce knowledge and ethnographic place. These include catching up, sharing, exploring, interacting and archiving.
  2. Field notes in the digital era are changed by the ‘on the fly’ tagging of ideas and events rather than retroactively reflecting on events and experiences in a deliberate and thoughtful way. A balance needs to be achieved since both provide relevant information for ethnographers in social media spaces.

Catching up refers to continual checking in to social media spaces to ‘see’ what is happening, who’s posting, what is being posted, what needs to be attended to, in order to build a regular presence.

Sharing becomes intertwined with catching up when, in the process of catching up, re-tweets, sharing and annotations occur. Enhancing name and fame is not the least of what occurs while sharing. Reciprocity is not essential but appreciated when sharing events, actions, ideas and creations. Following becomes another means of sharing common interests.

Exploring becomes inextricably linked to catching up and sharing since material that is found is often shared which leads to more catching up when others re-share and remix. This is also a means of remix and revise. As we explore more, we are susceptible to more ideas where we can build connections that may have not occurred to others. When we explore, it can be a short excursion, dip in and step back, or a deeper dive into a topic or experience that takes time and persistence. Having a ‘home base’ grounds these explorations in purpose. My deep dive into auto ethnography, digital ethnography and ‘netnography’ are grounded in the home base of my new ventures into PhD research.

Interacting occurs in varying forms and intensities (Postill & Pink, p. 129). Strong ties with regular exchanges in a variety of social media spaces are compared to weak ties within random, loosely connecting participants. An example of this would be the difference in my interactions with Virtually Connecting vs those with CLMOOC. I reflect that perhaps purpose, passion and events shape the interactions in frequency and intensity.

Archiving, like curation, is an essential digital literacy. Using tags and codes may shift the research methodology but both are critical ways of collecting and comparing data for analysis. Building a hashtag cloud is one way to examine usage of common tags relating to blog posts, tweets or images. Codes and codebooks can become reflective mechanisms to review social media entries for historical analysis. Blogging as a form of field notes, diary writing is a means to both tag and code for research purposes.

Finally, the importance of balancing field notes and diary writing in digital ethnography is revealed, since both become essential means of data collection and analysis. Gathering and accumulating information on events, actions, ideas and reflections within periods of calm as well as times of turbulence will provide a rich, data-filled collection for review and analysis. Since this is one period of relative calm in my early PhD process (prior to any course work or exposure to direction) this is going to provide a unique perspective, which will change over time.

Reference

Postill, J. & Pink, S. (2012). Social media ethnography: The digital researcher in a messy web. Retrieved from http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/files/2013/04/Postill-Pink-socialmedia-ethnography.pdf