Tag Archives: lurking

Researchers as lurkers⤴

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Researcher as lurker
J McNeil p129

An interesting paragraph in a book I am reading at the moment (Lurking, by Joanne McNeil). We are used to talking about learners as lurkers, but here’s another perspective. What images do we invoke when we think about the researcher as lurker?

The picture of researcher as outsider – as a profiteer swooping in to steal content and to cherry pick meaning to fit their own agenda – was one that gave me pause during my own PhD (I am sure some of you remember the story of the ‘researchers’ who came across a Google Doc that some of us were using to start writing a journal article and used it in a conference presentation without asking or attributing – the affront we felt at that unethical behaviour has stayed with me). I chose participatory research as my methodology, and ultimately ended up writing an autoethnography because I wanted to try to allow my community to have a voice in what I was doing, and to make it clear that what I was saying was my own interpretation.

Of course Twitter is public, and the ToS make it clear that researchers are permitted to use tweets without attribution, but imo that is not the full story – there are also ethical considerations (I say some things about this in my PhD thesis if anyone is interested).

I’m not sure where I am going with this yet – as always I am writing to find out what I am thinking.

Twitter chat personas⤴

from

Say cheese

I’ve been thinking a lot about the different ways of interacting, or not, on Twitter this week, and I’ve come up with a rough list of types of engagement in Twitter conversations:

  • Academic:  adds relevant academic references
  • Networker: links to others/brings other tweeps into the conversation
  • Self-publicist: always twists the conversation to talk about their work; provides links to their work over and over again
  • Cheerleader: RTs with added positive comments about the original post
  • Enthusiast: replies to say how great everybody and their ideas are
  • Lurker: likes posts, might RT without added comment, but does not post
  • Critic: disagrees, adds alternative points of view, but does so in a positive way*
  • Troll: no need to define these*

What do you think? Do you recognise yourself or others in this categorisation? Ha:ve I missed out any personas you’d include?

* Thanks to Len for these two

Stealing learning⤴

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He came like a thief in the night. Stealthily, furtively, he crept in. With nobody watching he grabbed it, clutched at it with all his might, cradled it close to his chest and shuffled away.

This picture of learners who do not actively post, but passively consume, is one that I think is prevalent with some folk. I’m not minded to give in to it – I think that this is an opportunity to reclaim the term. That’s an idea that is at the edge of my mind a lot at the moment. Lurking there, some might say. I’ll say more soon, but in the meantime here’s a couple of my sketches.