Digital media research

Latest publication: "A Humanistic Approach to the Study of Social Media: Combining Social Network Analysis and Case Study Research," in SIGDOC 2011 Proceedings.

Abstract: Humanistic research into social media is presently diverse in approach, but rich in theoretical underpinnings. It is un- surprising that there is some difficulty in translating often text-based approaches to multi-media rich, rapidly-evolving social networking environments. We explore theoretical is- sues for studying social media with respect to one popular research methodology: case study research (CSR). Here we examine the challenges that social media pose to CSR in the humanities and then advance an approach using social network analysis (SNA) to assist in selecting case studies. This approach, we argue, improves selection of case studies by considering the network structures of social media.

Kelly, Ashley R., & Kittle Autry, Meagan. (2011). "A Humanistic Approach to the Study of Social Media: Combining Social Network Analysis & Case Study Research." Proceedings for the 29th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication. Pisa, Italy: ACM, 257-260.

Digital media research methods

I am very interested in methodology issues related to the study of digital media in the humanities. As I elaborate on in an August 2011 blog post, "The difficulty in being a digital media scholar," the internet - while a fascinating and continual source of research inspiration - poses serious challenges for rigorous study by humanists. This is an ever-present issue in my doctoral courses as we seek to study digital media in a rigorous way in our courses but the strong methodological bases do not exist in the literature that we can call on for our study foundations.

Recognizing the challenges that digital media pose for our scholarship, Ashley Kelly and I explored how we might begin to address these issues in our SIGDOC paper. We focus specifically on the case study as a popular choice for humanities scholars when studying digital media and explore how social network analysis can serve as a useful tool for finding meaningful artifacts for analysis on the internet. We intend to follow up this short paper with a more in-depth analysis within the next year.