17. Hashtag Network Analysis and Interwoven Research Ethics with Ryan Gallagher and Brooke Foucault Welles

17. Hashtag Network Analysis and Interwoven Research Ethics with Ryan Gallagher and Brooke Foucault Welles

Author: Katherine A. Keith, Naitian Zhou, & Lucy Li April 24, 2022 Duration: 55:50

Our guests in this episode are Ryan Gallagher, a PhD Candidate in Network Science at Northeastern University, and Brooke Foucault Welles, an Associate Professor in Communication Studies and the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University. We discuss their 2019 CSCW paper, "Reclaiming Stigmatized Narratives: The Networked Disclosure Landscape of #MeToo" with co-authors Elizabeth Stowell and Andrea G. Parker.

We talk about their substantive motivation for focusing on #metoo, the networked counter public, and hashtags' influence on social change. Ryan and Brooke also walk us through the advantages of pairing qualitative and quantitative work, weaving ethics throughout every stage of the research process, dealing with missing Tweets, and taking seriously both the "computational" and "social science" sides of CSS.


Behind every published paper or headline-grabbing finding using social data, there's a hidden story of collaboration, dead ends, and problem-solving. Diaries of Social Data Research pulls back the curtain on that process. Hosted by researchers Katherine A. Keith, Naitian Zhou, and Lucy Li, this series sits down with scholars working at the intersection of computational methods and social science to explore the real, human effort behind the datasets. Each conversation functions like an open research diary, detailing how interdisciplinary teams actually come together, navigate differing academic cultures, and tackle the practical hurdles of working with massive, often messy, information about human behavior. You'll hear about the stalled projects, the unexpected breakthroughs, and the meticulous work that turns a raw idea into a credible contribution. This isn't a podcast about polished results, but about the fascinating and often untold journey of modern research. For anyone curious about how we actually study society through data-the alliances built, the ethics debated, and the code debugged late into the night-this series offers a rare and authentic look inside the lab.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 20

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