Technoscientific Musings at WUSTL

Bonilla and Rosa’s discussion about whether hashtags can serve as a field site is helping me work through my research for a paper I’m working on for a different class that relies heavily on twitter posts. Thinking about hashtags as a “semiotic indexing system” really gets at the extent to which hashtags create an interpretive frame. In Tamil Nadu, for example, the linear narrative being collectively produced in the aftermath of the Jallikattu protests is being produced by “indexing” or recasting water events alongside the now rescinded ban to render water the primary site of contestation between Tamil and Indian identities.  This “indexing” characterization of hashtags is the mechanism by which people don’t necessarily collude, but still collectively create linear narratives by strategically including and excluding certain stories.

The indexing in social media can create oppressive hegemonic narratives but can also facilitate counterhegemonic discourse. A couple days ago I read a paper on the mobilization of popular support via social media during the so-called “anti-corruption” movement in India in 2011. The author uses the phrase the “twittering classes” to describe how social media mobilization is emancipatory in some respects, but ultimately still another example of Partha Chatterjee’s conception of a “civil society” distinct from a “political society” that excludes the rural and urban poor. Bonilla and Rosa’s fleshed out discussion of the participatory politics of social media fit well with very informative but sometimes thin UCL readings over the last few weeks. Every chapter has emphasized the multi-dimensionality of social media and how it always works in conjunction with social structures to amplify or undermine (or some combination of both) existing patterns of behavior.

Also, this footnote reminded me of our class discussion about the ethics of “virtual” research.

“Although it is important to debate the ethical concerns surrounding “Twitter research,” we would caution against viewing these as entirely new, or disconnected from previous methodologi- cal and ethical debates in social science research. The fact is, these issues speak to long-standing anthropological concerns regard- ing “misinformed consent” through either a user agreement or a signed institutional review board form (du Toit 1980; Sankar 2004; Wax 1980), the implications of using “naturally occurring” versus “elicited” communication (Dobrin 2008; Wolfson 1976), and the larger question of the general role and purpose of the “native voice” in anthropological texts (Bonilla n.d.; Trouillot 2003). Engagement with these questions in the context of digital platforms should thus not be set apart from discussions of “analog” methods and ethical concerns.”