Coding and Classifying Knowledge Exchange on Social Media: a Comparative Analysis of the #Twitterstorians and AskHistorians Communities

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dc.contributor.authorGruzd, Anatoliy
dc.contributor.authorKumar, Priya
dc.contributor.authorAbul-Fottouh, Deena
dc.contributor.authorHaythornthwaite, Caroline
dc.date.accessioned2022-04-13T08:20:36Z
dc.date.available2022-04-13T08:20:36Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.description.abstractAs social media become a staple for knowledge discovery and sharing, questions arise about how self-organizing communities manage learning outside the domain of organized, authority-led institutions. Yet examination of such communities is challenged by the quantity of posts and variety of media now used for learning. This paper addresses the challenges of identifying (1) what information, communication, and discursive practices support successful online communities, (2) whether such practices are similar on Twitter and Reddit, and (3) whether machine learning classifiers can be successfully used to analyze larger datasets of learning exchanges. This paper builds on earlier work that used manual coding of learning and exchange in Reddit ‘Ask’ communities to derive a coding schema we refer to as ‘learning in the wild’. This schema of eight categories: explanation with disagreement, agreement, or neutral presentation; socializing with negative, or positive intent; information seeking; providing resources; and comments about forum rules and norms. To compare across media, results from coding Reddit’s AskHistorians are compared to results from coding a sample of #Twitterstorians tweets ( n  = 594). High agreement between coders affirmed the applicability of the coding schema to this different medium. LIWC lexicon-based text analysis was used to build machine learning classifiers and apply these to code a larger dataset of tweets ( n  = 69,101). This research shows that the ‘learning in the wild’ coding schema holds across at least two different platforms, and is partially scalable to study larger online learning communities.de
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/s10606-020-09376-y
dc.identifier.pissn1573-7551
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10606-020-09376-y
dc.identifier.urihttps://dl.eusset.eu/handle/20.500.12015/4266
dc.publisherSpringer
dc.relation.ispartofComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 29, No. 6
dc.relation.ispartofseriesComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
dc.subject#Twitterstorians
dc.subjectAskHistorians
dc.subjectContent analysis
dc.subjectKnowledge exchange
dc.subjectMachine learning
dc.subjectReddit
dc.subjectSocial media
dc.subjectTwitter
dc.titleCoding and Classifying Knowledge Exchange on Social Media: a Comparative Analysis of the #Twitterstorians and AskHistorians Communitiesde
dc.typeText/Journal Article
gi.citation.endPage656
gi.citation.startPage629

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JCSCW Vol. 29 (2020)