Coding Twitter: Reflections on Analyzing Science Tweets

• In Event: Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Revisiting Approaches to Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis

Abstract

Content analysis is a popular methodology used to investigate learning and communication on social media platforms like Twitter. Networked technologies like Twitter provide certain affordances, which in turn shape the interactions of the publics that develop around them. The result of this interplay between human agency and technological architecture is a text exhibiting specific characteristics. In this paper, we use De Baugrande and Dressler’s standards of textuality as a framework to explore Tweets as units of analysis, and share some the challenges we have encountered coding Tweets by exploring data collected in our investigation of Twitter in informal science learning and engagement.

Authors

• Noah Goodman, Education Development Center, Inc.

• Daniel Light, Education Development Center, Inc.