Association of Internet Researchers conference 2015

Easy Data, Hard Data: The Politics and Pragmatics of Twitter Research after the Computational Turn

Jean Burgess and Axel Bruns

• 23 Oct. 2015 – Association of Internet Researchers conference, Phoenix

In this presentation, we draw out the relevant themes from a range of critical scholarship from the small body of digital media and software studies work that has focussed on the politics of Twitter data and the sociotechnical means by which access is regulated. We highlight in particular the contested relationships between social media research (in both academic and non-academic contexts) and the data wholesale, retail, and analytics industries that feed on them. We also discuss in detail the pragmatic edge of these politics in terms of what kinds of scientific research is and is not possible in the current political economy of Twitter data access. Finally, we return to the much broader implications of these issues for the politics of knowledge, demonstrating how the apparently microscopic level of how the Twitter API mediates access to Twitter data actually inscribes and influences the macro level of the global political economy of science itself, through re-inscribing institutional and traditional disciplinary privilege.