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by escapedmoose 1541 days ago
Oh, that actually explains a lot. I don’t use Twitter, nor do most of the people I talk to about these things. Frankly, most of the stuff I see on Twitter sounds to me like it was composed by an insane person. If you used more of a “boots on the ground” approach and interviewed people who aren’t chronically online, your findings might ring more true with people like me. But maybe that’s not your goal? Nothing wrong with using Twitter as your basis, but I think the site as a whole will feel “off” to a lot of people unless you make it very clear that your data is Twitter-based.
2 comments
ShaunCammack 1541 days ago
I would love to have the resources to do interviews and fieldwork. But we try and get these posts out within 6 hours of them trending, before the antagonistic narratives solidify and people move on to the next topic.

And although a fraction of the country uses twitter, we think it has a much larger influence. Twitter is like a narrative breeding ground, and those narratives are then picked up by journalists, which are then propagated in mainstream media and broadcast to people who aren't on twitter.

That's at least our thinking. We should probably be more explicit about what our methodology is (and why)

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escapedmoose 1540 days ago
That makes perfect sense, and I believe you’re right about the eventual influence that trickles down from Twitter (though I think a lot of the vitriol gets diluted in the process). n=1, I would have had a much better initial impression of the site if the Twitter connection/methodology was more explicit. Especially if you explained your purpose for the connection, as you’ve done here.
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notduncansmith 1541 days ago
This is a great point. It’s also worth considering the impact that Twitter’s algorithms have on which posts get engagement and correspondingly show up in searches for prominent opinions. You may want to curate certain Twitter accounts that accurately represent the stances of various factions (various members of government, celebrities/influencers, publications with various degrees of partisanship, etc) to check in on for takes on narratives, in addition to talking to more non-Twitter people.
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