Paper presented by Sky Croeser and Tim Highfield at Compromised Data? colloquium, Toronto, Canada, 29 October 2013. http://www.infoscapelab.ca/news/oct-28-29-colloquium-compromised-data-new-paradigms-social-media-theory-and-methods [Tim's additional note: This presentation is focused specifically on doing research around social movements and producing findings and contributing new knowledge about how activists use social media and online technologies – there is some very important and detailed quantitative analysis of Twitter discussions around social movements and uprisings which provide critical information about communication online and responses to international events, and my intent is not to discount this work just because it is quant-only – these studies do different things and have different aims, and so the scope of their findings is not the same by extension (I’m not sure that I made this point clearly in the presentation, though).]

1. Mapping Movements
Social movement research and big data:
critiques and alternatives
Sky Croeser
Curtin University, Australia
skycroeser.net // @scroeser
Tim Highfield
Curtin University + Queensland University of
Technology, Australia
timhighfield.net // @timhighfield

3. Principles for
social movement research
Research should:
• Be relevant and useful to movements.
• Protect participants from harm.
• Be accessible to activists.
• Make biases visible.
• Be open to questions from, and discussion
with, activists.
• Provide empirically-grounded analysis.

4. Big data and the
researcher-movement relationship
• Big data research does not
require presence in social
movement spaces.
• Quantitative research is often
seen as more 'true'.
• The structure of academia
encourages research designs
that allow for swift
publication.

5. Mapping Movements
Looking at how social movements
are using new media.
• Case studies:
• Occupy Oakland;
• the Tunisian WSF;
• antifascist activism in
Athens.
• Methodology:
• Quantitative + qualitative.
• Online + offline.

6. The relevance and use of research
• Does big data research relieve us of an
obligation to repay activists for their time?
• Does big data research make it more difficult
to identify movement priorities?

7. Protecting participants
• Big data research has the
potential to open activists
to unforeseen risks, even
when working with data
that is already open.

8. Research should be accessible
• Is there a commitment to writing in an
accessible way?
• Can activists access the tools which
researchers are using for big data work?
• Can activists interpret and question big data
methodologies?

9. Researchers should have
a clear political stance
• Activists want to know who they are dealing
with before allowing access to their
movement
• Big data research
removes their
ability to do this.

10. Activists as experts
• (How) do we make space for activists' (more
detailed and grounded) knowledge in big data
research?
• Does big data research commit to 'nothing
about us without us'?
• How do cultural assumptions about big data
as hard science contribute to the divide
between researchers-as-subjects and
activists-as-objects?

11. Issues with accuracy
• Does having a clear political
stance undermine the
‘objectivity’ of the
researcher?
• Big data itself does not
(cannot) represent a wholly
accurate resource, either.

12. The biases of big data
• Regardless of the size of the data captured,
the dataset is not everything, nor is it
representative of the entire social movement.
• Biases associated with singleplatform studies, particularly
Twitter – over-representation
within research, based on
access, tools, ethical approvals.

13. Big data blind spots
• Not everyone in the movement is online (for
various reasons), and the impact this has on
the shape of the online discussion as opposed
to the physical movement.
• What is posted on social media is being
framed, coded, censored by participants
based on the wider context which may be
unknown to the researcher at a distance.

14. Limits of data
• Raw numbers and representativeness.
• Unused features and features tracked/not
tracked by tools used.
• Means of capture (hashtags, keywords, but
discussions range beyond).
• Noise and spam.
• Access to the platform in question.

15. How big data can help us
• Rich datasets add nuance to our
understanding of social movements.
• Identify phenomena around online aspects
of the movement, patterns of activity.
• Provide the means for examining how
movement occurs online.
• Such examinations are vital for understanding
how social movements make use of the
internet.

16. By their powers combined
• When the movement has physical and digital
forms, then understanding both – and their
context – is crucial.
• Researchers can study not only who is
involved in the movement online, but also
who is not and why, including perspectives
which are unlikely to be
visible or obvious from
online data alone.

17. Mapping Movements
• Sky’s research blog:
• http://skycroeser.net/tag/mappingmovements/
• Tim’s research blog:
• http://timhighfield.net/?cat=49
• Twitter: @scroeser | @timhighfield