Introducing the Web Team Our Contributing Expert: Dr. Janet Salmons

Hello to the NSMNSS blogosphere! You may recognize my name from posts and events over the past year, and I am delighted to be a part of the continued work of the New Social Media, New Social Science project as a contributing blogger. I recorded a short introduction for the visual and aural communicators out there!

I have served on the graduate faculty member of the Capella University School of Business and Technology since 1999. I thought I would teach a course or two but fell in love with online teaching and here I am! Capella learners are scholar-practitioners, working adults who integrate life and career experience with rigorous academic study. I currently focus my efforts on dissertation supervision, which provides a living laboratory for observing the development of new research—primarily with online qualitative methods. Their struggles and triumphs help me understand the eclectic mix of practical and scholarly skills needed to successfully conduct research.

I am also an independent researcher, writer and consultant through Vision2Lead. My areas of inquiry include online collaboration and online research methods that allow us to better understand how we interact in the virtual environment. I have an interest in both ethical leadership and ethical research in this connected world.

With Dr. Victoria Boynton I am engaged in an online duoethnography we are calling “Work/Place,” an exploration of the influences of the environment (natural, cultural, physical, virtual) on work creativity and productivity. My recent study on the ways women entrepreneurs use the Internet is the subject of a chapter now in press: “Putting the E in Entrepreneurship: Women Entrepreneurs in the Digital Age” (Salmons, 2014). Online Qualitative Interviews is also in press for a spring release. As well, I edited Cases in Online Interview Research (2012) and wrote Online Interviews in Real Time (2010) for Sage Publications.

Given the above background and interests, my blog posts will include observations and discussion about how and why we use social media for research—and for building community among researchers. I look forward to hearing from you about your questions and dilemmas, thoughts and insights. Comment to my posts, find me at #einterview or www.vision2lead.com.

Introducing the Web Team Our Contributing Expert: Dr. Chareen Snelson

Greetings from Boise, Idaho, USA. It is my honor and pleasure to join the NSMNSS web team as an contributing expert. In this post I will briefly describe my background as it pertains to this group and the dynamic arena of social media research.

I currently work as an Associate Professor and Associate Department Chair in the Educational Technology Program (EDTECH) at Boise State University. The majority of our EDTECH program is graduate level and completely online. I have been teaching online with this program for over a decade. Prior to my work in higher education I was a middle-school science teacher. I have been enamored with video in education ever since those early years teaching science to teens. Video seemed like the best way to introduce these rural Idaho teens to active volcanoes, deep sea life, or experts on topics we were studying. Of course, back then we relied on the now antiquated VCR technology to play video in the classroom. I never knew if it was going to work or not. What an adventure. Now, as an online educator I find video very valuable in presenting information or communicating with students at a distance. Google Hangout with screenshare has become a favorite application for helping students with technical issues or for communicating with adjunct instructors who live at a distance from campus. When YouTube was initially developed I became intrigued by the possibilities of tapping in to its growing body of content and sharing tools for education. In 2008, I created a course called "YouTube for Educators", which was initially offered as a temporary elective for our EDTECH graduate students. The course became popular and was converted to a permanent elective. Now, we offer the course every year. My syllabus is online if you are curious about the content. I also maintain a related teaching blog called TubeTeaching and an active YouTube channel.

My research has progressively focused on educational applications of YouTube and what people post on YouTube (e.g., videos, comments). My most recent research article, Vlogging About School on YouTube: An Exploratory Study (New Media & Society), used YouTube as a data source. The process of using YouTube, or other social media platforms, as a data source can be a fascinatingly challenging one as I have learned from personal experience. After completing the vlogger study I had the opportunity to delve into a deeper discussion of the methodology in a research case, which has been accepted for the forthcoming SAGE Cases in Research Methodology collection. The rest of my publication list is available on my vitae.

I see a lot of work ahead in the area of YouTube and social media research. My primary interests seem to be converging on online ethnography and qualitative content analysis although other methodologies are quite interesting. A high priority for me right now is gaining a better understanding of how researchers are designing qualitative and mixed-methods social media studies. In the spring of 2014, I will spend my one-semester sabbatical delving deeply into the subject of how people have been conducting qualitative or mixed-methods research on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. This work will involve an examination of both methodology and technologies used to support social media research. I am a rampant NVivo user, but have not yet explored the full gamut of options available for qualitative social media research. My Social Media Research and Technologies blog is where I have begun to document this exploration. This blog will serve as an avenue for discussing my sabbatical project on social media research as it progresses. I have strong interest in this topic and hope to connect with other like-minded researchers. I am looking forward to sharing, learning, and collaborating through my time with NSMNSS and beyond.

Introducing the PhD Blogger: Amy Aisha Brown

I was lucky enough to be chosen as the PhD blogger for #NSMNSS, but before I start posting more about the perks and pitfalls of using social media in my research, I will give a little bit of an introduction to me, my research, and how it all fits under the #NSMNSS umbrella.

To start off, I think I should point out that I wouldn't really class myself as a social media researcher. Rather, I am one of those researchers who has been swayed by the possibilities of what the digital trails of social interaction that social media users leave in their path can tell us about aspects of their daily lives.

My research interest could be described broadly as the English language in Japan. I come to looking at this from the background of applied linguistics, a wide-ranging field of research looking at understanding language related issues in the real world, and I am influenced by work in world Englishes, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and discourse studies.

I am not so interested in the kind of English you can find in Japan (i.e., the grammar people use, their pronunciation, or the effectiveness of their communication), rather I look at the discourses of the English language. In other words, the way that English is talked about and conceptualized.

So, where does social media fit in? Well, I am using Twitter as my source of data. I collect tweets in Japanese that include the word 英語, which means ‘English (language)’. I then use techniques from corpus linguistics to find patterns in how people talk about the language.

I am conducting my research within the Open University’s Faculty of Education and Language Studies under the supervision of Ann Hewings and Philip Seargeant. The various aspects of my study are well supported: Ann brings a knowledge of English language studies and corpus linguistics, and Philip has written extensively on English in Japan and has an interest in language and social media (he is part of the SocialMedia Language research group, which looks at language and communication in social media). However, the lack of precedent in using social media for socially oriented research (especially within applied linguistics) and the ever-changing nature of the field, means that there are a number of theoretical, methodological, and ethical bridges that need to be crossed.

In my time as PhD Blogger I want to illuminate issues that have arisen but also the steps I have taken (or more likely am in the process of taking) to navigate those murky waters. Hopefully, this will give an insight into how the issues associated with research using social media pan out, at least in this my context.

who am I - Introducing the web team: Dr Sarah-Louise Quinnell

I am delighted to be the blog editor for #NSMNSS and thought it was about time I introduced myself Properly ... 

I am not entirely sure how best to describe myself: Behavioural Geographer, Digital Humanist or Learning Technologist. Informally, digital junkie would probably best describe it, or at the very least a hybrid of all three. My research interests focus on the cognitive processes underlying spatial reasoning, decision making, and behaviour that people display within online spaces, specifically online spaces used for learning. My practical experience has focused on developing digital environments / communities and resources / content to support people engaged in Vocational, specifically Practice Based Professional Learning (PBPL).

I am an experienced researcher, instructional designer and freelance trainer and enjoy working with a range of organisations to develop resources to support learning through pushing digital boundaries. I have a PhD from the Geography Department at King’s College London, where I was the first student to complete their research entirely online. I am currently undertaking an MA in Online and Distance Education with the Open University, which I will complete next April.

I have written for a range of digital publications on issues to do with research, digital technology and social science. These include; The Guardian Higher Education Network, The Thesiswhisperer, PhD2Published, LSE Impact Blog and Social Science Space by SAGE. 

In 2011 I set up Networked Researcher, a training and development resource and community to support early career researchers and Higher Education Institutions looking to engage with digital technology to support the academic research process.

I am looking to cover a range of topics / themes during my time as Editor and I am eager to get members of the network involved. So please do let us know what topic areas you would like us to cover over the coming weeks.