Approaches to using social media sources in Russian research

1. Approaches to using social media sources in Russian research Jeremy Morris, Aarhus University Http://postsocialism.ORG/network @russophiliac 18.3.2019

2. Special Issue: New Media in New Europe-Asia- E-AS https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ceas20/64/8?nav=tocList Introduction, Jeremy Morris, Natalia Rulyova and Vlad Strukov Maria Bakardjieva, Mundane Citizenship: New Media and Civic Society in Bulgaria) Boris Gladarev and MarkkuLonkila, The Role of Social Network Sites in Civic Activism in Russia and Finland CaiWilkinson with Yelena Jetpyspayeva, From Blogging Central Asia to Citizen Media: The Evolution of neweurasia Dimitri Jagodin, Blog Medvedev: Aiming for Public Consent Florian Toepfl, Blogging for the Sake of the President: The Online-Diaries of Russian Governors Sarah Oates, Political Challengers or Political Outcasts?: Comparing Online Communication for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the British Liberal Democratic Party OrlinSpassov, Contesting Bulgaria’s Past Through New Media: Latin, Cyrillic and Politics Galina Miazhevich, Ukrainian Nation-Branding Off- and Online: VerkaSerduchka at the Eurovision Song Contest Natalia Rulyova with TarasZagibalov, Blogging the Other: Construction of National Identities in the Blogosphere Jeremy Morris, Learning How to Shoot Fish on the Internet: New Media in the Russian Margins as Facilitating Immediate and Parochial Social Needs Natalia Sokolova, ‘Prosuming’ Transmedia: Entertainment or ‘Free Labour’? (The cases of S.T.A.L.K.E.Rand Metro 2033) Vlad Strukov, Imagining and Ideology of Digital Commemoration (the case of Allods Online)

3. My research outputs on SNS • J Morris 2012 ‘Learning to Shoot Fish on the Internet: New Media in the Russian Margins as Facilitating Immediate and Parochial Social Needs,’ Europe-Asia Studies 64(8) (2012), 1546-64. DOI:10.1080/09668136.2012.712275.[ISSN 0966-8136] ….The present research seeks a contextualised understanding of new media use by considering how it is embedded in established everyday social settings and practices. • J Morris 2013 ‘Actually-existing Internet Use in the Russian Margins: Net Utopianism in the Shadow of the ‘Silent Majorities’’, Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia 2(2), 181-200. Data was gathered “online” and using traditional participant observation of informants, constituting a “connective ethnography.”… the article discusses at length the problems with scholarship that seeks to highlight the civic potential of new media in less democratic societies, such as Russia. The complexity of imputing civic or politicized use of the SNS is highlighted by informants’ observed use.

4. Qs about connective ethnography (both online and offline ethnography) • How does ‘pervasive communication’ (Fischer et al. 2008: 529) affect social relationships within societies with a history of ideological, centralised control? • Is it a mistake to study [new media] as a world apart, dislocated from the rest of people’s social lives (Miller & Slater 2000)? • How to do “Connective ethnography”? = sensitivity to ‘the making of context’ includes local physical context plus increasing connections between information resources in the form of people, systems and texts (Dirksen et al. 2010)

5. Virtual ethnography v. Ethnography for the Internet… (Hine 2000; 2015) • Virtual Ethnography stresses purely online methods to legitimise the Internet as a tool for social research, • Ethnography for the Internet focuses “on ethnography for the Internet, rather than ethnography of the Internet” (p.5). • Internet is now embedded, embodied and everyday, Hine advocates the need for flexible ethnographic methods to fit the multiple research questions that arise due to the complexities and widespread nature of today’s internet. As an adaptive method we must modify ethnography, for example by performing auto-ethnography or even pop-up ethnography. • Pop-up ethnography might mean attending short-period events associated with an online group or cause (‘temporary spaces’). It might include, PO, interviews, online Whatsapp group monitoring and PO, online fora PO. See Maxwell et al. 2013

6. Slater, Don and Miller, Daniel (2000) The internet: an ethnographic approach. Berg Publishers, Oxford.  • The trouble with virtuality in existing studies (assume internet disembedded from real life; virtual seen as defining feature of internet; assumption of placeless cyberspace • Instead of starting from dubious assumption of a placeless cyberspace, Miller and Slater opposite assumption: that internet practices are extensions of real-world practices • ethnographic approach to internet studies (as basis for comparison; follows long-term immersion; this is not an ICT domestication/appropriation study; rather how Trinidadians put themselves on the global stage via internet; it’s about material culture) • So-called digital divide (surprised to find huge presence of internet on ‘poor’ island; often indirect access; some people try to bypass formal education via ICTs)

7. ‘How do people make themselves at home in this space and mould it to their own image’? * • why this is not ‘network’ or ‘virtual’ ethnography: Because the ‘online’ element is balanced with ‘participating, overtly or covertly in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens’ (Hammersley & Atkinson 1995)

8. Selection of informants and respondents, Methods • Survey and Interview Public library users asked to complete written survey: - Uses, Time spent, Place and Context of Use, ‘Local’ Use, Social Networking - Reasons for non-use Follow-up interviews explored issues in more depth. • Observation and semi-structured interview - Snowballing of initial informants to select users willing to allow observation - Observation of users, semi-structured interviews on reasons for uptake, use and meaning of internet

9. Public ‘use’ in the margins serves as a warning that looks can be deceiving - unreflexive research into New Media ends up imputing community culture from the formal structures of its networks (Howard, 2002: 554) E.g. active users online may be marginal players ‘offline’; powerful players may be invisible online. The Russian Margins and New Media • Does the net alter meaning of geographical distance? • Interactive communication? • More channels of informational flow? • Volume of communication? • Speed of communication?

10. Do Woolgar’s (2002) rules of virtuality still hold (on the social dimensions of new media)? Uptake and use of new techs depend crucially on local social context Virtual techs supplement rather than substitute for real activities The more virtual the more real The more global the more local

11. Pitfalls in thinking about technological change and society • W. R. NeumanThe Future of the Mass Audience 1991 • Critique of technological determinism = effects determined by tech, not complex social contexts in which they occur • Critique of organisational determinism, Howard 2002 – unreflexive research into New Media ends up imputing community culture from the formal structures of its networks • Awareness of ‘interaction effects’ (avoiding technological determinism by looking at interaction between economic, cultural and technological effects.) – lead us to focus on technology-in-use. Institutions that are shaped in reaction to tech, persist and then in some senses impose themselves and structure tech themselves – i.e. tech is ‘domesticated’ by society. E.g. Pool on the history of the telephone (1983).

12. Literature list (quoted in this talk plus others) • Boellstorff, T., Nardi, B., Pearce, C., Taylor, T. 2012. Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method, Princeton: Princeton University Press. • V. Dirksen, A. Huizing, and B. J. Smit, “Piling on Layers of Understanding: The Use of Multiple Methods for the Study of (Online) Work Practices,” New Media & Society 12 (2010): 1045–63. • M. Fischer, S. Lyon, and D. Zeitlyn, “The Internet and the Future of SocialResearch,” ed. N. Fielding, R. M. Lee, and G. Blank, The Sage Handbook of Online Research Methods (London: Sage, 2008), 519–36. • Hine, C. 2000. Virtual Ethnography, London: Sage • Howard, P. N. 2002. Network Ethnography and the Hypermedia Organization: New Media, New Organizations, New Methods. New Media & Society, 4(4), 550–574. J. S. Juris, “Networked Social Movements: Global Movements for Global Justice,”ined. M. Castells, The Network Society: A Cross--‐‑Cultural Perspective (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004), • Maxwell, D. , Woods, M. and Prior, S. (2013), The pop‐up ethnographer: Roles of the researcher in temporary spaces. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, 2013: 200-215.  • Miller, D. & Slater, D. (2000) The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (London & New York, Berg). • J. Morris, “Learning How to Shoot Fish on the Internet: New Media in the Russian Margins as Facilitating Immediate and Parochial Social Needs,” Europe-Asia Studies 64, no. 8 (2012): 1546-‑64. • J Morris 2013 ‘Actually-existing Internet Use in the Russian Margins: Net Utopianism in the Shadow of the ‘Silent Majorities’’, Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia 2(2), 181-200. • Neuman, W. R. (1991) The Future of the Mass Audience (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). • ZiziPapcharissi, “The Virtual Sphere: The Internet as a Public Sphere,” New Media & Society4, no. 1 (2002): 9–27. • B. Wellman and C. Haythornthwaite, eds., The Internet in Everyday Life (Oxford:Blackwell, 2002), 32. • Stephen Woolgar, “Introduction,” in ed. Woolgar, Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1–21.

13. Break out tasks • Consider ‘domestication’ of platforms, ‘rules of virtuality’. • How could we as researchers take account of the ‘embeddedness’ of SNS? • What kind of mixed methods, ‘offline’ methods can we realistically use to supplement pure ‘virtual’ research data collection? • In other words, how can we avoid ‘passive’ use of the online resources (or assumption that our research subjects’ use is passive)? • What about ethical questions?

14. PART 2 • Practicalities in using SNS as research resources. • In this Part I’ll talk about basic tips and examples of using VK for research materials.

15. Topics and VK groups you have suggested • https://vk.com/mir_limonova • https://vk.com/russianskz_info • https://vk.com/gunners_lovers • Suggestions for topics to research using social media as source: • Attitudes towards ethnic Russians abroad • Views on Russian foreign policy (or domestic policy) among people living in Russia vs. among people living outside Russia • Attitudes/views on foreign reporting by Russian media • Attitudes/views on reporting on Russia by foreign media

16. Straightforward considerations using SNS. Link from ‘poligonnamnet’ • Open v. covert research (pseudonym v. snowballing using real name) • Small groups v. large groups (quality v. quantity) • Bounded v. cross-over to other platforms and media (parallel WhatsApp, Odnoklassniki, Instagram) • Permanence v. ephemeral material • Your recording and storage of material • What else?

17. Case Study – how I used a trade union vkontakte page • https://vk.com/mpra_kaluga (community tab) • 2400 members, open group, active admin, many comments, discussion boards. Uploaded documents, links to other groups. • Used to ‘supplement’ more traditional qual methods • Used to snowball to other individuals (can default ‘follow’ rather than friend), e.g. https://vk.com/reshetin (high quality microblog) • Used to snowball to other groups, e.g. https://vk.com/cinemarxisme

18. Simple things to do with groups Skim and scan groups to find key topics, info. Create database in Word and ‘bibliography’ of single contributor. • Dmitry Trudovoy Переводы в январе 2013 - 8 человек с кузовного, 2 человека с логистики, 2 человека с лакокраски: 1. Рыжов Роман Викторович2. Анатийчук Иван3. Едигарян Абгар4. Каюмов5. Тригодько Яна (кандидатура снята из-за длительного больничного)6. СеменецАлексей7. ГамидовМаабия8. Баринов Сергей9. Шевченко Валерий10. Абсалямов Александр11. Михалаки Александр12. Герасимов Евгений. Like Jan 19, 2013 at 12:52 pm|Report spam|Reply • Vadim Klopov а переводы будут продолжаться?или в связи с ситуацией на заводе про это можно не думать?? Like Jan 31, 2013 at 9:36 am|Reportspam|Reply • Andrey Trotsky Дмитрий, а людей у которых логовор от агенства всего на пол года сразу переведут по его истечении или тоже самое будет? Like Jan 31, 2013 at 12:02 pm|Reportspam|Reply

19. Low-tech “Cut and paste” (pretty effective, even for large amounts of text) • E.g. “Ситуация с работниками кадровых агенств • Anatoly Demidov • There are 129 posts in this discussion” [23 pages in Word and 5000 words captured] [cut and paste will retain some things, like replies, names of contributors and dates], but will not retain ‘likes’. Pros – simple and effective, allows textual analysis Cons – out of context of rest of group activity.

20. Caution! Context of group/embeddedness important • https://vk.com/mpra_kaluga Useful resource, but online only use would render invisible to researcher following factors: • Needs cross-referencing with ‘paper’ newsletter of union which is much more important to non-politicised members • Network analysis reveals ‘hidden’ but strong link to sponsoring/mother organisation of activist membershttp://anticapitalist.ru/ • ‘censorship’ of mentions of rival group ‘Yellow union’ ASM.https://vk.com/club63654608 Implications?

21. Break out 2 • Try some ‘low tech’ interactions with an SNS group or person’s wall. • Try comparisons between platforms (see if there’s a similar group or topic on FB, VK or Odnoklassniki) • What other platforms are worth considering in your research? • How can we go beyond ‘just text’ analysis? • How ‘engaged’ and ‘participatory’ do you want to be? What could be the pros and cons? • Reconsider the meaning of ‘snowballing’ in your own topic/sphere of research online. Sometimes known as ‘snowball sampling,’chain sampling’,’chain-referral sampling’,’referral sampling’, ‘respondent-driven sampling’

22. Part 3 Getting technical, going public? • In this section we will consider learning some coding to do more sophisticated manipulations of data and ‘scraping’ • We will also discuss the opportunities of more public engagement with SNS/microblogs and how this can aid our research • Noting the limitations of public network resources in the Russian context

23. Basic technical tools http://www.roadtogrammar.com/textanalysis/ Text analyser – rates level of sophistication according to CEFL. Used to compare users and identify trolls/hacked accounts https://popsters.us/ With free account, can give analytics of any public group on social media • E.g. ‘text analyse’ creates most-frequently-used words graphs in left. • Can calculate ‘metrics’ of engagement with content (average ‘likes’ for period; total comments/follower/count of posts) • If you create new twitter profiles you can re-register to get multiple free accounts

24. Data visualization from popsters

25. NodeXL – Network Overview Discovery and Exploration for Excel • https://www.smrfoundation.org/ • Uses Excel to collect, analyse and visualise social networks from SNS

26. Vertices: Post contents and and statistics: Likes, Comments orShares • Time Series: Analyze the timing pattern of publishedposts. • Network Top Items: Most frequently used words, word pairs, hashtags andURLs Post ContentAnalysis

27. Twitter – how to ‘parse’ posts https://twitter.com/search-home How to parse? Understand search variables • https://twitter.com/search?q=пенсия&src=typd • q – query • src (source) • typd (typed) But this will only get you 1% of data for this search and only literally typed searches To get more up-to-date: • Try https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=пенсия&src=hash • Add ‘realtime’ • https://twitter.com/search?q=ювенальнаяюстиция&src=typd

28. Create your own bot for research • https://www.labnol.org/internet/write-twitter-bot/27902/ Instructions on how to make a bot to monitor and collate or curate tweets “Twitter Bots can automatically favorite or retweet tweets that match certain criteria. It can follow Twitter users who have tweeted a particular phrase. A brand may build an auto-reply Twitter bot that automatically responds when the brand gets a @mention on Twitter. You may have a bot that sends a DM (direct message) to users who follow you on Twitter.” e.g. https://twitter.com/postsocialism

29. Pros and cons of bots • No coding knowledge needed • Can automate following of users or addition of them to a Twitter list who tweet on particular topics or whose Twitter profile (bio) matches your search criteria. • Requires gaining developer permissions from Twitter (online form and registration of developer account) https://developer.twitter.com/en/apps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TMNURI1klM (guide) • Cannot be used for DMs (direct messages)

30. More advanced techniques • Require learning some Python code https://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/bs4/doc/ Can deal with complex pages and extract all the text from a webpage http://docs.scrapy.org/en/1.6/intro/overview.html Guide to create scraping tools and spiders to crawl for information through websites https://medium.freecodecamp.org/creating-a-twitter-bot-in-python-with-tweepy-ac524157a607 Case study of creating crawler to find trolls http://www.tr0lly.com/ripple/the-xrparmy-explained/

31. Case study of twitter account interactions on topic of cryptocurrenyAnalyses time of day of posts, amount of content, originality of content, complexity of language. Based on this info you can work out whether it’s a human account or a bot/automated troll

32. Academic data analysts – G. Comai • https://forthcoming.giorgiocomai.eu/ • https://codebase.giorgiocomai.eu/2017/12/15/exploring-putin-annual-news-conference/ • https://codebase.giorgiocomai.eu/2017/12/15/exploring-putin-annual-news-conference/ • https://giocomai.shinyapps.io/Kremlin_en/ • https://www.europeandatajournalism.eu/

33. https://codebase.giorgiocomai.eu/2017/12/15/exploring-putin-annual-news-conference/https://codebase.giorgiocomai.eu/2017/12/15/exploring-putin-annual-news-conference/

34. https://giocomai.shinyapps.io/Kremlin_en/

35. Public-facing research = actively participating in a network we are researching • Examples – posting our own polls in VK or Twitter • Building public lists of handles (personal profiles) • Responding to discussions in FB • Overtly, or covertly requesting feedback, responses online, particularly using private messages • Problems with Twitter – the reality behind the hype (FB is actually a better communicative medium due to the way you can make some posts public and share them) • Fake/paid followers/trolls/shitposting/time sap/pointless virtue signalling • Limited public data

36. Examples of ‘public facing’ research on FB https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2204933359564024&set=a.1225679467489423&type=3 Discussion of seminar result in FB https://www.facebook.com/mikhail.nemtsev.7/posts/10156755821251049 Question asked on FB about history of academic language https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.morris.7359/posts/10155921378026776 Blog post shared publically in FB, eliciting comment

37. Limitations to SNS use and work-arounds • FB possible restrictions? • VK not ‘safe’, i.e. security services can easily access • Linkedin not available in RF • The lesson of the demise of Zhivoizhurnal– FB decline by demographic? What to do? • It’s worth building ‘real’ informants and curating/collating them as contacts in Whatsapp, etc. • Don’t rely on a single SNS • Consider ‘older’ and more mainstream alternatives: fora/ comments pages (e.g. of VW stories in media and lack of moderation!)

38. Break out tasks • Try doing twitter search (replace Cyrillic term) • Try these with a Social Media account/group/post https://twitter.com/search?q=пенсия&src=typd https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=пенсия&src=hash https://twitter.com/search?q=ювенальнаяюстиция&src=typd • Try these with a Social Media account/group/post http://www.roadtogrammar.com/textanalysis/ https://popsters.us/