For our first episode in Series II, we are excited to share a Read & Record of the 2018 article “(Re)framing Big Data: Activating Situated Knowledges and a Feminist Ethics of Care in Social Media Research” by Dr. Mary Elizabeth Luka & Dr. Mélanie Millette.
In this article, the authors seek to problematize assumptions and trends in “big data” digital methods and research through an intersectional feminist lens. Articulating their critique through a feminist ethics of care, the article poses a number of practical questions about practices of care in social media research, pointing toward future research directions.
“The sooner we understand social media data — big, small, thick, or lively — as a humanly constructed artifact shaped by power relationships and crafted according to certain values and standing points, the more we can realize how these processes enable and shape our decisions about our methodology. Both of our examples build on Annette Markham’s (2013) framing strategies and our own extension of Deborah Lupton’s (2015) notion of “lively” data, over time and through the “real” (materialized) worlds of situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988). This allows us to draw on an updated ethics of care to illustrate how different kinds of data—implicated at different registers of engagement over time — can “turn” us in practical ways to critically rethink the ongoing intersectional networks of relations, values, and ethical commitments that undergird our research and those of others” (Luka & Millette, 2018, p. 3-4).
The article is recorded and shared under a Creative Commons Licence and available as a full text and PDF online through SAGE Journals here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305118768297
Reference: Luka, Mary Elizabeth and Millette, Mélanie. “(Re)framing Big Data: Activating Situated Knowledges and a Feminist Ethics of Care in Social Media Research,” Social Media & Society, 2018, pp. 1-10. DOI: 10.1177/2056305118768297.