During the upcoming 2nd GESIS Computational Social Science Winter Symposium 2015 in Cologne, I had the chance to organize a pre-symposium workshop on Studying the Use of Twitter in Political Communication. An interesting selection of colleagues decided to present their experiences in working with digital trace data collected on Twitter in their research. Here is the program.
2nd GESIS Computational Social Science
Winter Symposium 2015
Cologne, Germany
Pre-symposium Workshop: Studying the Use of Twitter in Political Communication
Organized by: Andreas Jungherr (University of Mannheim)
Time:
Dec. 1, 13:00-18:00
Location:
Room “WEST II”
GESIS
Unter Sachsenhausen 6-8, 50667 Köln
Abstract:
The use of Twitter in political contexts has been a burgeoning research field of late. The study of Twitter’s use in political communication and election campaigns has been at the center of this effort. Social scientists as well as computer scientists have addressed this topic in their work. While studying the use of Twitter in political communication is undeniably becoming increasingly popular, the field is characterized by a multitude of different approaches, practices, and research questions. While such a variety is to be expected in any new research field, there are obvious benefits to be gained by researchers coming together and exchanging their research interests, best practices, and lessons learned. In fact, for the emergence of standardized approaches and best practices meetings like this are a prerequisite. This workshop shall offer an opportunity for such an exchange.
A series of presentations by researchers working with digital trace data collected on Twitter will provide a starting point for a discussion about common practices and challenges in working with Twitter data. Topics of the presentations will be:
– Underlying research interests;
– Best practices and challenges in data collection, preparation, and analysis;
– Results;
– Steps in which they would wish the field to mature.
The focus of these presentations will lie not so much on presenting original research or research results. Instead, the focus will be firmly on the different approaches and experiences with regard to research practice.
The workshop will end with open discussion round between presenters and participants in the workshops to address the challenges and opportunities of the research process with digital trace data in general and data collected on Twitter in particular.
Program
13:00-13:30 – Introduction by the organizer and the workshop’s participants
13:30-15:00 – Panel 1
From word frequencies to topic modeling: Applying automated content analysis techniques to short social media messages
Damien Trilling (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Transnationalization in Twitter studies – Metadata and Tweet Contents
Sebastian Stier & Wolf Schünemann (Ruprecht-Karls-University, Heidelberg)
Twitter Friend Repertoires und publicly relevant speaker
Jan Schmidt (Hans-Bredow-Institut, Hamburg)
15:00-15:30 – Coffee break
15:30-17:00 – Panel 2
Studying Twitter Interaction Networks from a Relational Content Analysis Perspective
Christian Nuernbergk (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich)
Traces of Digital Interaction: The Challenge of Analysing Social Networks on Twitter
Oliver Posegga (University of Bamberg)
A Tutorial for Using Twitter-Data in the Social Sciences: Data Collection, Preparation, and Analysis
Pascal Jürgens (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz)
17:00-17:15 – Coffee break
17:15-18:00 – Open discussion round