Showing posts with label academic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academic. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 September 2023
Noteworthy disparities with four CAQDAS tools: explorations in organising live Twitter (now known as X) data
Written for researchers interested in extracting live X (formerly Twitter) data via Qualitative Data Analysis Software tools
QDAS tools that support live data extraction are a relatively recent innovation. At the time of our fieldwork, four prominent QDAS provided this: only ATLAS.ti™, NVivo™, MAXQDA™ and QDA Miner™ had Twitter data import functionalities. Little has been written concerning the research implications of differences between their functionalities, and how such disparities might contribute to contrasting analytical opportunities. Consequently, early-stage researchers may experience difficulties in choosing an apt QDAS to extract live data for Twitter academic research.
In response to both methodological gaps, we spent almost a year working on a software comparison to address the research question (RQ) 'How do QDAS packages differ in what they offer for live Twitter data research during the organisational stage of qualitative analysis?'. Comparing their possible disparities seems worthwhile since what QDAS cannot, or poorly, support may strongly impact researchers’ microblogging data, its organisation, and scholars’ potential findings. In the preliminary phase of research, we developed a features checklist for each package, based on their online manuals, product descriptions and forum feedback related to live Twitter imports. This checklist confirmed wide-ranging disparities between QDAS, which were not unexpected since they are priced very differently- ranging from $600 for an ATLAS.ti subscription, to $3,650 for a QDAMiner (as part of the Provalis Research’s ProSuite package, which also includes WordStat 10 & Simstat).
To ensure that each week's Twitter data extractions could produce much data for potential evaluation, we focused on extracting and organising communiqués from the national electrical company, the Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom). ‘Load-shedding’ is the Pan South African Language Board’s word of the year for 2022 (PanSALB, 2022), due to it most frequent use in credible print, broadcast and online media. Invented as a euphemism by Eskom’s public-relations team, load-shedding describes electricity blackouts. Since 2007, planned rolling blackouts have been used in a rotating schedule for periods ‘where short supply threatens the integrity of the grid’ (McGregor & Nuttall, 2013). In the weeks up to, and during, the researchers’ fieldwork, Eskom, and the different stages of loadshedding strongly trended on Twitter. These tweets reflected the depth of public disapproval, discontent, anger, frustration, and general concern.
QDAS packages commonly serve as tools that researchers can use for four broad activities in the qualitative analysis process (Gilbert, Jackson, & di Gregorio, 2014). These are (a) organising- coding sets, families and hyperlinking; (b) exploring - models, maps, networks, coding and text searches; (c) reflecting - through memoing, annotating and mapping; and (d) integrating qualitative data through memoing with hyperlinks and merging projects (Davidson & di Gregorio, 2011; Di Gregorio, 2010; Lewins & Silver, 2014).
To ensure that each week's Twitter data extractions could produce much data for potential evaluation, we focused on extracting and organising communiqués from the national electrical company, the Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom). ‘Load-shedding’ is the Pan South African Language Board’s word of the year for 2022 (PanSALB, 2022), due to it most frequent use in credible print, broadcast and online media. Invented as a euphemism by Eskom’s public-relations team, load-shedding describes electricity blackouts. Since 2007, planned rolling blackouts have been used in a rotating schedule for periods ‘where short supply threatens the integrity of the grid’ (McGregor & Nuttall, 2013). In the weeks up to, and during, the researchers’ fieldwork, Eskom, and the different stages of loadshedding strongly trended on Twitter. These tweets reflected the depth of public disapproval, discontent, anger, frustration, and general concern.
QDAS packages commonly serve as tools that researchers can use for four broad activities in the qualitative analysis process (Gilbert, Jackson, & di Gregorio, 2014). These are (a) organising- coding sets, families and hyperlinking; (b) exploring - models, maps, networks, coding and text searches; (c) reflecting - through memoing, annotating and mapping; and (d) integrating qualitative data through memoing with hyperlinks and merging projects (Davidson & di Gregorio, 2011; Di Gregorio, 2010; Lewins & Silver, 2014).
Notwithstanding the contrasts in the costs for different QDAS packages, it was still surprising how much the QDAS tools varied for the first activity, (a) ‘organising data’ in our qualitative research project: Notably, the quantum of data extracted for the same query differed, largely due to contrasts in the types and amount of data that the four QDAS could extract. Variations in how each supported visual organisation and thematic analysis also shaped researchers’ opportunities for becoming familiar with Twitter users and their tweet content.
Such disparities suggest that choosing a suitable QDAS for organising live Twitter data must dovetail with a researcher’s focus: ATLAS.ti accommodates scholars focused on wrangling unstructured data for personal meaning-making, while MAXQDA suits the mixed-methods researcher. QDA Miner’s easy-to-learn user interface suits a highly efficient implementation of methods, whilst NVivo supports relatively rapid analysis of tweet content.
We hope that these findings might help guide Twitter social science researchers and others in QDAS tool selection. Our research has suggested recommendations for these tools developers to follow for potentially improving the user experience for Twitter researchers. Future research might explore disparities in other qualitative research phases, or contrast data extraction routes for a variety of microblogging services. More broadly, an opportunity for a methodological contribution exists regarding research that can define a strong rationale for the software comparison method.
The authors greatly appreciate the SSRC's editor, Professor Stephen Lyon, advice on improving our final manuscript. We also thank The Noakes Foundation for its grant AFSDV02- our interdisciplinary software comparison would not have been possible without funding to cover subscriptions to the most extensive versions of MAXQDA Analytics Pro and QDA Miner. All authors are affiliated with the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and appreciate CPUT's provision of licensed versions of ATLAS.ti.
Please comment below if you have any questions or comments regarding our paper?
Please comment below if you have any questions or comments regarding our paper?
Friday, 23 December 2022
A summary of 'Who is watching the World Health Organisation? ‘Post-truth’ moments beyond infodemic research'
Written for infodemic/disinfodemic researchers and those interested in the scientific suppression of COVID-19 dissidents.
Dr David Bell, Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes and my opinion piece 'Who is watching the World Health Organisation? ‘Post-truth’ moments beyond infodemic research’ is available at https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/1263. It was written for a special issue, 'Fear and myth in a post-truth age’ from the Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa (see call at https://aosis.co.za/call-for-papers-special-collection-in-journal-for-transdisciplinary-research/).
A major criticism this paper raises is that infodemic research lacks earnest discussion on where health authorities’ own choices and guidelines might be contributing to ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ and even ‘malinformation’. Rushed guidance based on weak evidence from international health organisations can perpetuate negative health and other societal outcomes, not ameliorate them! If health authorities’ choices are not up for review and debate, there is a danger that a hidden goal of the World Health Organisation (WHO) infodemic (or related disinfodemic funders’ research) could be to direct attention away from funders' multitude of failures in fighting pandemics with inappropriate guidelines and measures.
A major criticism this paper raises is that infodemic research lacks earnest discussion on where health authorities’ own choices and guidelines might be contributing to ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ and even ‘malinformation’. Rushed guidance based on weak evidence from international health organisations can perpetuate negative health and other societal outcomes, not ameliorate them! If health authorities’ choices are not up for review and debate, there is a danger that a hidden goal of the World Health Organisation (WHO) infodemic (or related disinfodemic funders’ research) could be to direct attention away from funders' multitude of failures in fighting pandemics with inappropriate guidelines and measures.
In The regime of ‘post-truth’: COVID-19 and the politics of knowledge (at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596306.2021.1965544), Kwok, Singh and Heimans (2019) describe how the global health crisis of COVID-19 presents a fertile ground for exploring the complex division of knowledge labour in a ‘post-truth’ era. Kwok et al. (2019) illustrates this by describing COVID-19 knowledge production at university. Our paper focuses on the relationships between health communication, public health policy and recommended medical interventions.
Divisions of knowledge labour are described for (1) the ‘infodemic/disinfodemic research agenda’, (2) ‘mRNA vaccine research’ and (3) ‘personal health responsibility’. We argue for exploring intra- and inter relationships between influential knowledge development fields. In particular, the vaccine manufacturing pharmaceutical companies that drive and promote mRNA knowledge production. Within divisions of knowledge labour (1-3), we identify key inter-group contradictions between the interests of agencies and their contrasting goals. Such conflicts are useful to consider in relation to potential gaps in the WHO’s infodemic research agenda:
For (1), a key contradiction is that infodemic scholars benefit from health authority funding may face difficulties questioning their “scientific” guidance. We flag how the WHO ’s advice for managing COVID-19 departed markedly from a 2019 review of evidence it commissioned (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35444988).
(2)’s division features very different contradictions. Notably, the pivotal role that pharmaceutical companies have in generating vaccine discourse is massively conflicted. Conflict of interest arises in pursuing costly research on novel mRNA vaccines because whether the company producing these therapies will ultimately benefit financially from the future sales of these therapies depends entirely on the published efficacy and safety results from their own research. The division of knowledge labour for (2) mRNA vaccine development should not be considered separately from COVID-19’s in Higher Education or the (1) infodemic research agenda. Multinational pharmaceutical companies direct the research agenda in academia and medical research discourse through the lucrative grants they distribute. Research organisations dependant on external funding for covering budget shortfalls will be more susceptible to the influence of those funders on their research programs.
However, from the perspective of orthodoxy, views that support new paradigms are unverified knowledge (and potentially "misinformation"). Any international health organisation that wishes to be an evaluator must have the scientific expertise for managing this ongoing ‘paradox’, or irresolvable contradiction. Organisations such as the WHO may theoretically be able to convene such knowledge, but their dependency on funding from conflicted parties would normally render them ineligible to perform such a task. This is particularly salient where powerful agents can collaborate across divisions of knowledge labour for establishing an institutional oligarchy. Such hegemonic collaboration can suppress alternative viewpoints that contest and query powerful agents’ interests.
It is concerning how many Communication and Media Studies researchers are ignoring such potential abuse of power, whilst supporting censorship of dissenters based on unproven "harms". Embedded researchers seem to ignore that the Centers for Disease Control, National Institute for Health and the WHO’s endorsement of multinational pharmaceutical companies’ products is a particularly troubling development: it marks a ‘new normal’ of institutional capture by industry sponsoring regulators who become their ‘lobbyists’. This contrasts to the silo efforts of external influence in the past, for example by lobbyists working for Big Tobacco or Big Food. They spun embedded scientific research touting the ‘benefits’ of smoking and processed foods. At the same time, evidence of harm was attacked as "junk science".
At least with cigarettes and ultra-processed foods, many individuals have the choice to buy or avoid paying. In stark contrast, tax-paying publics have no such option in avoiding the steep costs of mRNA vaccines. Public taxes pay for these treatments, while less expensive and potentially more effective interventions are ignored. Paying for vaccines takes funding away from interventions that would address wider and more pressing global health needs, in particular, poverty, malaria, tuberculosis and T2DM.
Our article results from collaboration between The Noakes Foundation and PANDA. The authors thank JTSA’s editors for the opportunity to contribute to its special issue, the paper’s critical reviewers for their helpful suggestions and AOSIS for editing and proof-reading the paper.
This is the third publication from The Noakes Foundation’s Academic Free Speech and Digital Voices (AFSDV) project. Do follow me on Twitter or https://www.researchgate.net/project/Academic-Free-Speech-and-Digital-Voices-AFSDV for updates regarding it.
I welcome you sharing constructive comments, below.
Saturday, 23 April 2022
Eight conceptual challenges in developing the 'online academic bullying' framework
Written for scholars interested in understanding online harassment from academic cyberbullies, plus the development of the online academic bullying routine activity theory (OABRAT) framework
In developing our 'Distinguishing online academic bullying' article, Prof Tim Noakes and I trimmed the manuscript several times. Reworking some of these cuts in this post may offer value through addressing the methodological challenges we encountered in proposing our article's OABRAT framework. Seven conceptual challenges were overcome its development, while an eighth was encountered post-publication:
1 NEW FORMS OF POWER IMBALANCE
Conventional definitions of cyber-bullying suggest a power imbalance in which one aggressor is more powerful than his or her victim (Englander, Donnerstein, Kowalski, Lin, & Parti, 2017). By contrast, an established academic may be easily be targeted by individuals of varied statuses; who can mount frequent attacks as part of cybermobs. OAB differs from the conventional definition of cyberbullying in that there need not be a one-to-one power-imbalance in favour of the bully. It can include varied power relationships between a victim and his or her attackers: a standard power-imbalance may exist in the victim being on a lower rung of an academic cultural hierarchy within a particular field than the bullies (e.g. Cardiology has greater prestige than Sports Medicine in the medical field). However, a senior scholar may still be the subject of collegial mobbing (Davenport, Elliot and Schwartz, 1999). For example, the Emeritus Professor was attacked online by junior academics and non-scholars, from within his field and from other disciplines (see Figure 1 for his university).
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| Figure 1. Faculties and departments in which employees persistently criticised the Emeritus Professor on social media (Travis Noakes, 2020) |
Attacking a scientific dissident as a pre-defined target seemed to provide attackers with an instant form of credibility- they did not have to prove their symbolic credentials to gain visibility. Few of the professor's blogging critics were Health Science scholars. Despite making no scholarly contribution to the debate, some academic cyberbullies seemed to achieve visibility as opinion "leaders" online. This shows how micro-celebrity hijacking can apply for Higher Education (HE) employees. Academic bloggers criticise public intellectuals for "wrongthink" thereby gaining attentional capital- blogged critiques by "independent" critical thinkers can convert into appearances on broadcast media.
Power imbalances may also result from other differences in a victim’s status versus his or her attackers. These can span inequalities in capital (Bourdieu, 1986), notably social and cultural capital- a scholar who defends an unorthodox position is at a disadvantage in terms of her social capital. She will struggle to draw support against unfair criticism by organic groups of academic cyberbullies.
Another dimension of power imbalance may lie in technical cultural capital- an OAB recipient who has less knowledge of the digital platform(s) on which she is being attacked may be at a serious disadvantage. For example, cyberbullies can use advantages in their ‘digital dimensions’ (Paino & Renzulli, 2013) of cultural capital for gaining greater visibility. They can leverage a myriad of online presences for amplifying their attacks, whilst leveraging multiple chains of digital publication that are difficult for a victim to reply to.
This suggests another imbalance whereby OAB recipients will struggle to defend themselves against asymmetrical cyber-critiques. It may be exhausting to respond to frequent criticisms, across a myriad of digital platforms and conflicting timezones.
Another dimension of power imbalance may lie in technical cultural capital- an OAB recipient who has less knowledge of the digital platform(s) on which she is being attacked may be at a serious disadvantage. For example, cyberbullies can use advantages in their ‘digital dimensions’ (Paino & Renzulli, 2013) of cultural capital for gaining greater visibility. They can leverage a myriad of online presences for amplifying their attacks, whilst leveraging multiple chains of digital publication that are difficult for a victim to reply to.
This suggests another imbalance whereby OAB recipients will struggle to defend themselves against asymmetrical cyber-critiques. It may be exhausting to respond to frequent criticisms, across a myriad of digital platforms and conflicting timezones.
2 BEYOND TROLLS: ACADEMIC CYBERBULLIES AS DECEIVERS, FLAMERS, ETC.
Definitions of cyberbullying are in themselves broad, since
they may also cover electronic bullying and internet harassment (Berne et al., 2013) . Likewise, classifications for academic cyberbullies’ roles and behaviours must be wide-ranging to address how bullies can readily draw on many repertoires for anti-social communication. A highly agentive cyberbully could draw on practices that meet several characteristics- the mocking "jokes" of a malevolent troll, the swearing attacks of a 'flamer' and a 'deceiver''s misrepresentations in their self-presentation (e.g. a self-proclaimed "philosophe(r)"/"scholar" without a PhD). We chose not make sharp distinctions between an academic bully’s and
other online deviants' roles and behaviours, since this could actually include areas that strongly overlap. At the same time, we were mindful that defining OAB as a particular form of harassment by HE employees was important to ensure OAB does not become a catchall. There is a danger that definitions of harassment that are generalised can be misused in bad faith to apply to mere criticisms or mildly unpleasant language (Jeong, 2018).
3 SCIENTIFIC SUPPRESSION VERSUS BIO-MEDICAL HERESY "JUSTIFIES" HARASSMENT
When a challenger to orthodoxy begins to attract attention from patients, the general public and the press, then those in power will take active steps to protect the reigning paradigms (Martin, 2004). Adherents to the dominant ideology will view such individuals' questioning of the central values of their CMCDD orthodoxy as performing heresy. Heresy is created by the response of the orthodoxy when its views' delineate attacks as beyond the pale (Wolpe, 1994). Defenders of CMCDD might justify their harassment in believing that only high carbohydrate/low fat diets are “healthy”. Followers of this belief have argued that pursuing any other ideas or approaches constitute a "threat to public health". Following this rationale, such critics may argue for censorship of dissidents' "dangerous" work and to limit digital publics' exposure to state-of-the-art IRMCIH science news.
Defenders of the status-quo enjoy visibility as part of dominant networks and can readily spotlight “heretics” for criticism via formal and informal channels, such as social media. Recipients must negotiate rapidly-spreading disinformation, defamation, misrepresentation-of-argument and even character assassination HE employees involved in such adverse actions typically explain their actions as being justified in maintaining 'academic standards'' (Martin, 2020). However, such actions are detrimental in silencing dissenters' and whistleblowers' free speech, thereby stifling scientific debate and potential innovations.
4 FOREGROUNDING THE VICTIM’S PERSPECTIVE
5 ACADEMIC CYBERMOBBING- SEPARATE FROM AN ACADEMIC MOB
The Emeritus Professor's case study was closely linked to a formal mobbing at his former academic institutional employer. In the initial manuscript, we foregrounded this strong overlap: His employer's neglect of rules and policies against harassment by its employees provides a fertile space for harassment (Benatar, 2021). Senior leaders followed a dominating conflict culture (DCC) approach (Desrayaud et al., 2018) in protecting the Faculty of Health Science's (FHS) CMCDD orthodoxy from criticism. Although DCC actively encourages discourse about incompatible goals and ideas, DCC does not acknowledge the validity of opposing views. In a toxic DCC workplace, dissent is ignored and support for dissenters is withheld. Explicit bullying is seen as an acceptable response to intellectual differences and overt mobbing is also condoned. In this respect, attacks on the Emeritus Professor were similar to the bullying of other senior scholars that university leadership clearly tolerated (Benatar, 2017; Coovadia, 2015; Crowe, 2017; Crowe, 2019; McCain, 2020; Plaut, 2020; Soudien, 2015; Steer, 2019; Vernac News, 2019). In 2019, his employer's institution acknowledged that bullying was a major concern amongst staff (Feris, 2019), but has yet to recognise the importance of addressing DCC in its FHS. One positive recent development is that an anti-bullying policy was passed (2021). Albeit, a very late response to its former Ombudsman's recommendation from 2012 (Makamandela-Mguqulwa, 2020).
In university workplaces, bullies can use a justification of “academic freedom” to condone actions that would be unacceptable in other workplaces (Driver, 2018). For example, an academic lecturer (who is neither a scholar nor a scientist) published thirty blog posts that criticised the Emeritus Professor's popularisation of LCHF science. Although by no means an academic peer, this junior lecturer might justify such fervent criticism of a fellow employee at the same university as a necessary part of academic freedom in an institute of higher learning. Nevertheless, such obsessive behaviour from a low-ranking, under-qualified employee seems unlikely to be acceptable at any other place of employment.
In collating the varied forms of harassment from "academic colleagues", it was unsurprising that we initially considered a recipient's OAB as being inseparable from an experience of academic mobbing in the HE context. However, the manuscript's reviewers flagged that it could be separate- especially for targets outside HE. In response, we designed the OABRAT framework to accommodate a separate phenomenon.
Such separation also addressed concerns that the private, departmental ostracisation of ‘academic mobbing’ in HE (Seguin, 2016. Khoo, 2010) is a very different negative phenomenon from the public attacks that academic cyberbullies launch. Unlike the largely concealed backstabbing of an academic mob, academic cyberbullies criticisms are public. OAB recipients can readily spot critics and their networks in digital criticisms, such as group petitions. Like others cybermobbers, public attacks fall within a spectrum that can include: i. drive-by harassment, ii. low-level mobbing, iii. sustained hounding and iv. sustained orchestration (Jeong, 2018). Professor Noakes and I are working on a manuscript that explores this spectrum for defining an ‘academic cybermobbing’'s particular characteristics.
6 GUARDIANS AGAINST VICTIMS OF ACADEMIC BULLYING
In addition to considering academic cyberbullies practices and their recipients experiences, it is also vital to address the role of guardians. RAT supports addressing the activities of both the targets of crime, plus their guardians. In academic cyberbullying, it is important to consider how the online activities of a victim could be placing him or her at added risk. It is also worthwhile considering how the lack of action from guardians of civility, whether they be at the scholar’s academic institution or moderators for social media platforms, has an impact. Prevention would seem better than cure for the negative phenomenon of persistent cyber harassment. In OAB, this emerges when a large quantum of criticism from academic cyberbullies creates an easily searchable footprint.
Policies protecting employees at HE institutes from workplace persecution have largely focused on sexual and racial harassment. The danger exists that other forms of persecution may be neglected as seeming relatively unimportant by comparison (Citron, 2007). For example, aggressive behaviours in the workplace may be considered acceptable by default (Rayner, Hoel, & Cooper, 2002). Informal expectations and norms can increase the sense of a lack of accountability online and boost the likelihood of deviant behaviours. Without deterrents or any consequences for academic cyberbullying, bullies may believe that they will not be held accountable for their actions. Worse, hegemonic leadership may actually reward those whose cyberbullying seems to maintain perceptions of consensus. In HE, such rewards are unethical in undermining academic free speech, scientific innovation and motivating academic cyberbullying.
7 ACADEMIC BULLIES MAY TARGET OUTSIDERS FROM ANYWHERE
In conceptualising OAB, we came to argue that the victims of academic cyberbullies need not be HE employees. Feedback from IRMCIH proponents in varied health professions, plus LCHF entrepreneurs, confirmed attacks from cyberbullies in HE. While our literature review produced many examples of dissenting scientists and academic whistleblowers being confronted academic mobs, there is a gap concerning cases for bullying victims outside HE. This is another area that The Noakes Foundation's Academic Free Speech and Digital Voices (AFSDV) project can address for the IRMCIH scientific issue arena.
After Professor Noakes and I submitted the article for publication, we identified another concern to explore under the AFSDV theme:
8 A COMPLEX FORM FOR AN EXTREME CASE
GRAPHIC CREDITS
Stop, academic bully! shushmoji™ graphics courtesy of Create With Cape Town.
Thursday, 14 April 2022
Behind 'Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course'
Written for visual design educators and social semiotic researchers interested in students' use of data visualisations for argument.
Designed by Arlene Archer and Travis Noakes, 2021.
Table 2. Lesson topic changes from 2017 to 2018's course
1) Delimiting the scope of the task
2) Encouraging the use of readily accessible design tools
3) Considering gains and losses in digital translations
4) Implementing a process approach for developing argument and encouraging reflection
5) Developing meta-languages of critique and argument
6) Acknowledging different audiences and the risks of sharing work as novices
Figure 2. Tumi's limitations slide 2018
Professor Arlene Archer and my chapter, 'Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course', is to be published in 'Learning Design Voices'. Edited by Professor Laura Czerniewicz, Tasneem Jaffer and Shanali Govender. the book is produced by the University of Cape Town's (UCT) Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT). Its compilation aims to catalyse a discussion of key themes shaping practice in online learning design. Our contribution falls under the book's 'Learning materials, activities and processes' section. The book's other two tackle 'Learning Design as field, praxis and identity' and 'Humanising Learning Design'.
Our new chapter is a sequel to 'Exploring academic argument in information graphics' (2020), in which we proposed the framework for argument in data visualizations shown in Table 1. This social semiotic framework provides a holistic view that is useful for providing feedback and recognising students’ work as realised through the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meta-functions. For example, in addition to the verbal (written) mode that they are usually assessed on in Higher Education, students' digital poster designs must also consider composition, size, shape and colour choices.
Designed by Arlene Archer and Travis Noakes, 2021.
When the course was first introduced, many students' were able to produce attractive posters, but there seemed scope to support them in developing better arguments by revising the course's contents. Our follow-up piece describes how using this framework proved helpful for changing a second-year journalism, blended-learning course and helping students' argument-development:
In five-weeks, the lecturer had to teach novices- data infographics, graphic design and Excel software, visual design aesthetics and multimodal argumentation via data visualization designs. Many changes were considered for improving the posters’ argument and the lecturer changed the 2018 syllabus structure by adding two new sections (for ‘Multimodal argument’ and ‘Creative ideas for infographic design’, see Table 2).
A midway assessment was also introduced in which students’ infographic arguments were tested as works-in-progress. Reviewers’ feedback presented those who went for the wrong goalposts with opportunities for changing their direction by the final assessment. The new sections and mid-way assessment proved helpful for supporting 2018's students on aggregate with developing better arguments via infographic posters. The initial course was arguably weighted too much on using new tools for aesthetic design. By contrast, the new iteration was weighted towards teaching opaque discursive conventions and how to make a coherent, strong infographic poster argument using different modes that travel well as they traverse different formats.
To illustrate the benefits of this shift, our article focuses on two students, whose work differed from those of the 2017’s class in presenting meta-level critiques. As a result of some of the curriculum interventions, students began to engage with normative attitudes and societal discourses that shaped the information they shared. They began to flag how the graphs they shared might represent a numeric simplification of a qualitatively complex situation, and to point to the ways in which the categories for comparison may be blurred.
Before presenting two in-depth student cases, we described how several principles for learning design informed our analysis of student work using this framework:
1) Delimiting the scope of the task
2) Encouraging the use of readily accessible design tools
3) Considering gains and losses in digital translations
4) Implementing a process approach for developing argument and encouraging reflection
5) Developing meta-languages of critique and argument
6) Acknowledging different audiences and the risks of sharing work as novices
"Tumi" and "Mark" followed different approaches to metalevel critique in their data visualization project's. Tumi’s presentation (see Figures 1 and 2) critiqued the usefulness of Youth Explorer for exploring education in a peripheral township community versus a suburban ‘core community’. In contrasting the Langa township ward's educational attendance data versus the leafy suburb of Pinelands, she flagged why the results may be skewed unfavourably against Langa- children from peripheral communities often travel to core communities for schooling, so data for both core and peripheral communities “can be blurred to some extent”. Tumi also flagged that youth accused of contact crime were not necessarily ‘convicted or found guilty’.
Figure 2. Tumi's limitations slide 2018
By contrast, Mark’s poster (see Figure 3) critiqued the statistics available for understanding ‘poor grade 8 systemic results’ and the reasons for higher drop-out rates in schooling between suburbs. His poster explored the limitations of what Youth Explorer can tell us about systemic tests and how these link to dropout rates and final year pass rates. He argued that a shortcoming is the dataset’s failure to convey 'the role that extra-curricular support plays' in shaping learners’ results. Mark's poster reflected the fact that many children from affluent homes go for extra lessons after school to improve subject results. This knowledge of concerted cultivation was based on his personal experience, but is unaccounted for in most official accounts of educational input.
Both cases reveal how teaching a social semiotic approach for analysing and producing argument proved helpful. It informed changes to a data visualisation poster course that could better support students’ development as critical designers and engaged citizens- the two aspirant media professionals' meta-critiques flagged important challenges in relying on data that may be incorrect and incomplete, accurately spotlighting the inherent difficulties of simplifying qualitative complexity into numbers for their audiences.
If you would like to view a presentation on our research, please visit my earlier blog post at
https://www.travisnoakes.co.za/2021/10/the-presentation-developing-critique.html.
Acknowledgements
The research is based upon work supported by the British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship scheme. Travis’ research was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019-21) at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Both authors thank the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies for facilitating our research with students between 2017 and 2018. In particular, we thank Professor Marion Walton and Dr Martha Evans for their valued assistance. We also greatly appreciate the feedback from the editors and reviewers at Learning Design Voices.
Need support doing Social Semiotic research in Africa?
Both Arlene and Travis are members of the South African Multimodality in Education research group (SAME) hosted by UCT. Should you be interested in sharing your multimodal research project with its experts, please contact SAME.
I hope that you will read our chapter and find it informative. You are most welcome to give readers and I your feedback in the moderated comments section below.
Friday, 22 October 2021
The presentation 'A systematic literature review of academic cyberbullying- notable research absences in Higher Education contexts', plus its hyperlinks
Dr Pat Harpur and I recently presented on our manuscript 'A systematic literature review of academic cyberbullying- notable research absences in Higher Education contexts'. We spoke to the Design Research Activities Workgroup at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
SLIDE 1
Distinguishing an online academic bullying: identifying new forms of harassment in a dissenting Emeritus Professor's case.
The value (or otherwise) of social media to the medical professional : some personal reflections
Future Internet special issue on Cyberbullying Analysis in Higher Education call for proposals
SLIDE 3
Dr Pat Harpur's research profiles
SLIDE 6
The Social Media and Internet Lab for Research launches: empowering software development interns to work with social media data
SLIDE 7
SLIDE 8
The Noakes Foundation is the founder sponsor of Younglings’ SMILR lab at www.linkedin.com/posts/younglingsafrica_empowering-software-development-interns
SLIDE 9
Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
Workplace Bullying, Mobbing and Harassment in Academe: Faculty ExperienceSLIDE 32
The Noakes Foundation’s Academic Free Speech and Digital Voices theme
The Noakes Foundation's Lab for Low Carb Nutrition Research
Creative commons license for our presentation
Friday, 8 October 2021
The presentation 'Developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course', plus its hyperlinks
Here is a link to Associate Professor Arlene Archer and my presentation on our manuscript, 'Developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course'. It's on Slideshare at www.slideshare.net/TravisNoakes/developing-critique-and-academic-argument-in-a-blendedlearning-data-visualization-course. We developed this presentation for the Cape Peninsula University of Technology's (CPUT) Design Research Activities Workgroup (DRAW).
Slide 1
Developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course from Travis Noakes
For ease of clicking, I've shared the webpage links our presentation mentions here:
Slide 1
Learning Design Voices call
Slide 3
Lead Author- Associate Professor Arlene Archer
Multimodality and Society journal https://journals.sagepub.com/home/mas
Slide 4
UCT Writing Centre and the Language Development Group
UCT Writing Centre and the Language Development Group
Slide 5
SA Multimodality in Education (SAME) research group
Slide 6
Second author - Travis Noakes, PhD
Slide 10
A framework for argument in data visualization (2020)
Exploring academic argument in information graphics in 'Data Visualization in Society' (2020)
Slide 22
The fate of peripheral action research innovations?
http://www.cfms.uct.ac.za/fam/undergrad/ba-film-media-production-multimedia-production
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346797110_15_Multimodal_academic_argument_in_data_visualization
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346797110_15_Multimodal_academic_argument_in_data_visualization
Slide 24
Thanks for watching, watch again on Slideshare
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Please let us know if you have any questions about the presentation in the comments box below, ta.
Thursday, 8 April 2021
From informal academic debate to cyber harassment - navigating the minefield as a responsible contributor #WNS2021
This World Nutrition Summit (WNS2021) talk focuses on clinicians’ opportunities for becoming responsible digital content contributors on social media (plus several pitfalls).
These scholars are fighting for academic free speech in Higher Education (HE), where such speech is an important ideal but not a reality. Very few IRMCIH scholars enjoy opportunities to research and teach this emergent paradigm. Notably, there is very little debate in Higher Education concerning the dominant “cholesterol” model of chronic disease development (CMCDD) versus its IRMCIH rival. Skeptics of IRMCIH and low-carb diet interventions largely seem to ignore the role of scientific suppression in stifling IR scholarship. The most vocal skeptics do not seem to engage with the literature on the suppression of dissent or the sociology of scientific knowledge.
As Christopher Holmberg’s research has described, dissenting IR scholars in Sweden have turned to using digital platforms for contesting flawed nutritional guidelines; this raised political awareness around low carb diets, providing vital opportunities to contest the nutritional “authorities”. Notably, social media enabled low-carb experts to network their expertise and start conventional scientific research approaches that shift from the anecdotal. This does not seem to have happened in most other countries, though. Scientific suppression of the IRMCIH model in HE seems globally strong.
An emergent form of such suppression sees advocates for IRMCIH being targeted by cyberbullies from academia. Professor Tim Noakes and my Heliyon publication flags the emergence of Online Academic Bullying (OAB), which is an emergent challenge from HE employees whose academic cyberbullies dissident experts must confront. OAB included the distinctive attacks academic cyberbullies used against an Emeritus Professor- sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402100431X. In addition to academics, the Online Academic Bullying concept also applies to health professionals and those outside academia who become recipients of intellectual and other forms of harassment by higher education’s cyberbullies. A few emergent cyber harassment strategies are shown in the article's graphic abstract.
Cyberbullies in HE may also draw on many other forms of digital harassment for attacking others, as listed here.
While there are university policies that protect the public from racist, sexual and homophobic harassment, few universities seem to have tackled intellectual cyber harassment from their employees under anti-bullying policies. At The Academic Parity movement's STEM the BULLYING conference, probably the most important insight for the OAB research project emerged from Professor Loraleigh Keashly's talk; 'Without anti-bullying policies, incidents in HE are seen in isolation as once-off, rare and framed as subjective. Thus, they are not related to systemic or structural problems.'
This links to Academic Free Speech, since academic mobs can target dissident scholars being secure in the knowledge that even if they are removed unfairly that investigations are unlikely to identify a systemic pattern. In particular, one across several scholars over many years that has constrained free speech and dissent by the recipients of bullying. Further, an anonymised PostDoc pointed out that there are 'academic mafias' in the Health Sciences. These ensure that any dissenting Principal Investigators(PIs)/young researchers become ostracised and lose funding. Dissident PIs are soon replaced with compliant PIs who can be relied upon to adhere to the orthodox view. Given this context, anti-bullying policies and reporting are vitally important- not just to protect scholars from harassment, but for supporting free speech itself in HE.
To help reporting on the OAB phenomenon, Dr Patricia Harpur and I are currently researching an OAB reporting instrument (see https://bit.ly/3pnyE6w). We are approaching diverse IRMCIH scholars and LCHF activists to report their experiences with the form and to advise us on its strengths and weaknesses. Anonymised data from those who give us permission will be used to explore the varieties of OAB. In particular, we hope to explore differences by gender, nationality and profession. If you have experienced formal suppression and been targeted by academic cyberbullies and are interested in generating a report and even becoming a research participant, do email me on noakest@cput.ac.za for a Google Form invite and research consent form.
By contrast to IR scholars, who may lose their livelihoods for teaching, researching and promoting the IRMCIH model, many clinicians enjoy the professional freedom to share LCHF science and prescribe low-carb interventions. Clinicians need support with contributing to both the online and academic IR issue arenas. It starts with participating in networks, such as the Nutrition Network’s, where clinicians learn not only what works… but what is not known. This connection may motivate clinicians to help protect their peers by becoming ‘upstanders’ against cyber harassment. Upstanders are former bystanders who have recognised patterns of bullying behaviour and choose to intervene in a bid to stop bullying (Padgett & Notar, 2013).
Clinicians may also be able share the latest research with their clients. For those who are not English-speaking, clinicians have a huge opportunity to spotlight academic literature for those whose first language is not English, or clients who prefer to follow users in their home languages. The OAB research project has seen examples of this with Spanish interlocutors of an IRMCIH scientific editorial on YouTube. With the right support, health experts with the time and interest to contribute to scholarship, may be able to help close IRMCIH research gaps by researching their patients’ outcomes.
In sharing their work online, health professionals must choose how they present themselves: genuine identities are a norm for health professionals, but a pseudonymous identity is appropriate where dangers exist from public visibility. Likewise, there are trade-offs in choosing to portray a strictly professional role online, versus one with a blend of interests that could be more relatable to general public. Creators must also consider their preference in mode of communication: the academic default is verbal, social media is multi-media. However, digital content creators may choose to foreground productions with spoken-word, imagery, slides, or even video and coding projects.
With such a broad range of possibilities, it is important that health professionals define their main aim (such as producing a unique portfolio of content). They may have the luxury of time to develop a well-planned strategy for achieving that aim that draws on the examples of Nutrition Network influencers… or content creators might focus on learning-by-doing, gonzo approach where the plan is to continually experiment for finding what works. For example, the research literature does not address which academic social media sites’ audiences will best-respond to manuscripts, so developing presences on the most popular ones, then sharing a manuscript draft via all, would seem the best way to learn firsthand. Over time, health professionals will develop an understanding of who they want to speak to and how to move content across platforms for reaching witnesses and interlocutors.
For example, if a health professional is interested in pursuing civil debate, there are interesting options, such as: Reddit’s ‘change my view’, Debate.org and Letter Wiki. A particularly IRMCIH/LCHF-friendly space is subreddit/ketoscience, which has 175k members. These platforms are designed specifically for civil discussion, so are arguably better venues for agonistic exchange than social media networks. These have much greater reach, but are marred by underwhelming moderation and safety policies/procedures.
For health professionals on Twitter, Professor Murphy’s chapter Twitter and Health flags this platform’s influence on opening-up discussions on health: patients are using Twitter in a form of ‘update culture’ to share intimate information about their health (similar to a public diary of their health, but now as one’s personal Twitter domain on one’s IR scores for followers’ support). Such patients can potentially become a source of expertise whilst contributing to a support community for patients’ confronting the same condition(s). Health professionals can use Twitter to understand their patients’ behaviours better and to pursue research that might otherwise be difficult to arrange patients’ feedback on successful alternative treatments from. Notably, Johns Hopkins university has used the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Untangled project with researchers to capture 40 reviews of alternative and off-label treatments. Its participants and other ALS patients are encouraged to ask questions on the state-of-the-art science (for example, by engaging with the ALS Twitter account). This is similar to IRMCIH experts being contacted around LCHF lifestyle queries. Such shifts for patients, clinicians and researchers reveal how Twitter facilitates the circumvention of traditional controls in healthcare and life-sciences industries. This facilitates a poly-vocal approach in healthcare and the life-sciences versus the traditional uni-directional prescriptions from "The Anointed" experts in the Cathedral combining HE and media.
‘Scientific Twitter’ has emerged a popular choice for IRMCIH scholars to update each other, reach out of to sympathetic digital publics in the broader LCHF space. It also provides a platform for public disagreements with CMCDD supporters. For LCHF proponents' examples, please view a Twitter list featuring updates from The Noakes Foundation and other #LCHF advocates at https://twitter.com/i/lists/974554836850032640.
As Professor Noakes describes, by following LCHF proponents on Twitter, he can more easily stay current with their research than via journal notifications. Twitter provides him with as much scholarly information each day as he ever received in the years of his career as a researcher and teacher. He also describes how it supports the sharing of a message with a large number of people beyond one’s own immediate social circle.
As a highly influential and accessible platform for news and networking, Twitter provides an interesting example concerning how different forms of capital can be developed via microblogging as social media. Firstly, Twitter is free and easy-to-use, meaning there is no direct cost in ECONOMIC capital to its users. Twitter users own the copyright of the CULTURAL capital (or tweet content) posted via its service. Highly engaged Twitter users can develop SOCIAL CAPITAL via high numbers of followers. Interestingly, the number of Twitter users with more than a million followers is rarer than the number of dollar billionaires! This spotlights what an exclusive achievement cultivating a large Twitter audience is.
Twitter handles with large followings place their producers in a very exclusive category of high influence microblogger. Twitter itself is an influential news platform which does shape traditional media and the public debates it features. While rare, scientific research articles that break on Twitter can become widely shared. Not only does this contribute to an article’s ALTmetrics but, quite likely, a research publication’s citation rate.
Outside the Twitter platform, there are many other influences that undermine legitimate online debate
These include:
Overall, a polarized Twitter discussion may create great stats for its usage… and raise the visibility of its most frequent interlocutors… but Twitter’s limitations mean that high-quality debate is an unlikely outcome for participants!
Twitter’s algorithms reward controversy and highly emotive engagement with attention. So, if one wants to attract users to discussions, one must foreground what one is AGAINST. This is an effective strategy as it depositions one's opponents (who probably don’t want to be described as representing Fiat Science™!). It also serves as a lightning rod for witnesses and the critical interlocutors they might refer. Focusing on what one is FOR on the left is “nice”, but largely ineffective in terms of visibility. Speaking up in strong terms about what one is against will stoke more intense reactions and attention. Instead of hating the algorithm, savvy Twitter users must stoke IR and CMCDD controversies for lighting Twitter’s dumpster fires!
It’s also useful to be mindful of the limitations of what stats implicitly suggest that one focuses on. For example for scholars, ALTmetrics does not distinguish between sentiment in publications, which may all be negative as shown in the blue text. So, as a responsible online content contributor, one must be mindful of BOTH how one’s aims link to a preferred platform’s stats… and differs from them. For example, one may serve a niche LCHF interest that is unlikely to attract a high number of followers… nevertheless, its social impact in creating a support network for an under-served group of patients, whose examples come to be featured in the IRMCIH research literature, might be the best metric of success for one’s digital content contribution!SLIDE 27
Thank you for reading this post. I’d also like to thank the OAB Research team for their contribution to the research insights shared here.
And thanks to Create With for providing the Shushmoji graphics, which were designed as end-of-conversation points for cyberbullies. Check out Create With's work on Pinterest, Instagram or Facebook.
The post-conversion image quality of slides shared via Slideshare leave a lot to be desired. As a multimodal researcher, I'm exploring the talk's remediation into a blog post for online audience's ease-of-access. I trust its "slides" as 'images' plus reworked "presenter notes" as 'post text' do prove fit-for-purpose:
#WNS2021 was organised by the Nutrition Network, which digitally educates, trains and connects clinicians (ranging from doctors to health coaches) concerning up-to-date Insulin Resistance Model of Chronic Ill Health (IRMCIH) science and research in the field of Low Carb, High Fat (LCHF) nutrition interventions.
SECTION 1 covers why IRMCIH scholars have turned to digital platforms for promulgating their model… and the cyber harassment they negotiate from academic cyberbullies in HE. The latter is a core focus of the Online Academic Bullying (OAB) research project. SECTION 2 focuses on bridging the veracity of experiences shared on social media with the legitimacy associated with traditional scholarship publications. SECTION 3 focuses on the example of Twitter for developing capitals, as well as the challenges of engaging in online debates in online platforms.
#WNS2021 was organised by the Nutrition Network, which digitally educates, trains and connects clinicians (ranging from doctors to health coaches) concerning up-to-date Insulin Resistance Model of Chronic Ill Health (IRMCIH) science and research in the field of Low Carb, High Fat (LCHF) nutrition interventions.
Polishing one’s digital profile is an unusual practice, just like curating one’s photos. Many WNS2021 participants did not enter comprehensive details about themselves for their Accelevents profile and few added profile photos. Such inaction exemplifies how in most professional communities, becoming an original online content creator puts one in an exclusive category. Historic (and likely outdated!) research around online content creation suggests that 89% of Web 2.0 platform users are viewers, while 9% comment, rate and re-share content. Just 1% actively produce original/creative content (van Dijk, 2009). The NN community seems to be doing better (of the 6,000 professionals who have done NN courses, 150 have digital presences linked from its directory). There is plenty of scope to build on this (2%) and it also presents many interesting opportunities for media scholars. For example, given the scientific and professional suppression that IRMCIH scholars and LCHF proponents face, how many use pseudonymous accounts that these experts do not want to be linked back to their genuine identity? Chat feedback and polls linked to my virtual talk suggested that several do!
My talk encouraged low-carbohydrate clinicians to leverage an opportunity mindset in sharing their professional roles and interests via digital practices to raise their visibility and spotlight low-carb interventions’ successes. Ideally, clinicians should be supported with turning such successes into academic publications, to best support the precarious opportunities of IRMCIH scholars.
My talk encouraged low-carbohydrate clinicians to leverage an opportunity mindset in sharing their professional roles and interests via digital practices to raise their visibility and spotlight low-carb interventions’ successes. Ideally, clinicians should be supported with turning such successes into academic publications, to best support the precarious opportunities of IRMCIH scholars.
SLIDE 2
SECTION 1
SLIDE 3
These scholars are fighting for academic free speech in Higher Education (HE), where such speech is an important ideal but not a reality. Very few IRMCIH scholars enjoy opportunities to research and teach this emergent paradigm. Notably, there is very little debate in Higher Education concerning the dominant “cholesterol” model of chronic disease development (CMCDD) versus its IRMCIH rival. Skeptics of IRMCIH and low-carb diet interventions largely seem to ignore the role of scientific suppression in stifling IR scholarship. The most vocal skeptics do not seem to engage with the literature on the suppression of dissent or the sociology of scientific knowledge.
SLIDE 4
Rather than HE being an ideal place to lead scientific innovation, which pseudoskeptics typically present it as, it can be a CMCDD dictatorship. Here, academic mafias stifle dissenting scholars for daring to challenge an old model and high-carb, low-fate guidelines. IRMCIH proponents in HE Health Sciences become ostracised as “heretics”; just as other medical dissidents have been (Martin, 2004).
SLIDE 5
As Christopher Holmberg’s research has described, dissenting IR scholars in Sweden have turned to using digital platforms for contesting flawed nutritional guidelines; this raised political awareness around low carb diets, providing vital opportunities to contest the nutritional “authorities”. Notably, social media enabled low-carb experts to network their expertise and start conventional scientific research approaches that shift from the anecdotal. This does not seem to have happened in most other countries, though. Scientific suppression of the IRMCIH model in HE seems globally strong.
SLIDE 6
An emergent form of such suppression sees advocates for IRMCIH being targeted by cyberbullies from academia. Professor Tim Noakes and my Heliyon publication flags the emergence of Online Academic Bullying (OAB), which is an emergent challenge from HE employees whose academic cyberbullies dissident experts must confront. OAB included the distinctive attacks academic cyberbullies used against an Emeritus Professor- sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402100431X. In addition to academics, the Online Academic Bullying concept also applies to health professionals and those outside academia who become recipients of intellectual and other forms of harassment by higher education’s cyberbullies. A few emergent cyber harassment strategies are shown in the article's graphic abstract.
SLIDE 7
Cyberbullies in HE may also draw on many other forms of digital harassment for attacking others, as listed here.
SLIDE 8
While there are university policies that protect the public from racist, sexual and homophobic harassment, few universities seem to have tackled intellectual cyber harassment from their employees under anti-bullying policies. At The Academic Parity movement's STEM the BULLYING conference, probably the most important insight for the OAB research project emerged from Professor Loraleigh Keashly's talk; 'Without anti-bullying policies, incidents in HE are seen in isolation as once-off, rare and framed as subjective. Thus, they are not related to systemic or structural problems.'
This links to Academic Free Speech, since academic mobs can target dissident scholars being secure in the knowledge that even if they are removed unfairly that investigations are unlikely to identify a systemic pattern. In particular, one across several scholars over many years that has constrained free speech and dissent by the recipients of bullying. Further, an anonymised PostDoc pointed out that there are 'academic mafias' in the Health Sciences. These ensure that any dissenting Principal Investigators(PIs)/young researchers become ostracised and lose funding. Dissident PIs are soon replaced with compliant PIs who can be relied upon to adhere to the orthodox view. Given this context, anti-bullying policies and reporting are vitally important- not just to protect scholars from harassment, but for supporting free speech itself in HE.
SLIDE 9
To help reporting on the OAB phenomenon, Dr Patricia Harpur and I are currently researching an OAB reporting instrument (see https://bit.ly/3pnyE6w). We are approaching diverse IRMCIH scholars and LCHF activists to report their experiences with the form and to advise us on its strengths and weaknesses. Anonymised data from those who give us permission will be used to explore the varieties of OAB. In particular, we hope to explore differences by gender, nationality and profession. If you have experienced formal suppression and been targeted by academic cyberbullies and are interested in generating a report and even becoming a research participant, do email me on noakest@cput.ac.za for a Google Form invite and research consent form.
SLIDES 10 and 11
There is a paucity of research into how dissenting IRMCIH scientists and clinicians have used digital platforms for working around scientific suppression and censorship. In response, The Noakes Foundation supports the research theme ‘Academic Free Speech and Digital Voices’, which the OAB research project falls under. This theme largely aims to flag the importance of digital voice for IRMCIH scholars in Higher Education. By contrast, TNF’s theme ‘From clinical practice to published research’ seeks to leverage the freedom that clinicians’ enjoy in prescribing low-carb interventions. It links them to research and supporting clinicians with doing research and preparing manuscripts that can help address gaps in the IRMCIH academic literature.
SECTION 2
SLIDE 12
SLIDES 13 & 14
By contrast to IR scholars, who may lose their livelihoods for teaching, researching and promoting the IRMCIH model, many clinicians enjoy the professional freedom to share LCHF science and prescribe low-carb interventions. Clinicians need support with contributing to both the online and academic IR issue arenas. It starts with participating in networks, such as the Nutrition Network’s, where clinicians learn not only what works… but what is not known. This connection may motivate clinicians to help protect their peers by becoming ‘upstanders’ against cyber harassment. Upstanders are former bystanders who have recognised patterns of bullying behaviour and choose to intervene in a bid to stop bullying (Padgett & Notar, 2013).
Clinicians may also be able share the latest research with their clients. For those who are not English-speaking, clinicians have a huge opportunity to spotlight academic literature for those whose first language is not English, or clients who prefer to follow users in their home languages. The OAB research project has seen examples of this with Spanish interlocutors of an IRMCIH scientific editorial on YouTube. With the right support, health experts with the time and interest to contribute to scholarship, may be able to help close IRMCIH research gaps by researching their patients’ outcomes.
SLIDE 15
In sharing their work online, health professionals must choose how they present themselves: genuine identities are a norm for health professionals, but a pseudonymous identity is appropriate where dangers exist from public visibility. Likewise, there are trade-offs in choosing to portray a strictly professional role online, versus one with a blend of interests that could be more relatable to general public. Creators must also consider their preference in mode of communication: the academic default is verbal, social media is multi-media. However, digital content creators may choose to foreground productions with spoken-word, imagery, slides, or even video and coding projects.
With such a broad range of possibilities, it is important that health professionals define their main aim (such as producing a unique portfolio of content). They may have the luxury of time to develop a well-planned strategy for achieving that aim that draws on the examples of Nutrition Network influencers… or content creators might focus on learning-by-doing, gonzo approach where the plan is to continually experiment for finding what works. For example, the research literature does not address which academic social media sites’ audiences will best-respond to manuscripts, so developing presences on the most popular ones, then sharing a manuscript draft via all, would seem the best way to learn firsthand. Over time, health professionals will develop an understanding of who they want to speak to and how to move content across platforms for reaching witnesses and interlocutors.
SLIDE 16
SLIDE 17
For example, if a health professional is interested in pursuing civil debate, there are interesting options, such as: Reddit’s ‘change my view’, Debate.org and Letter Wiki. A particularly IRMCIH/LCHF-friendly space is subreddit/ketoscience, which has 175k members. These platforms are designed specifically for civil discussion, so are arguably better venues for agonistic exchange than social media networks. These have much greater reach, but are marred by underwhelming moderation and safety policies/procedures.
SLIDE 18
Media studies researchers who focus on participatory culture and Connected Learning have shown the importance of an opportunity-mindset in education for teenagers’ practices with digital affinity networks. The same likely applies for leaders in the LCHF and IRMCIH connective movements. If clinicians develop a positive mindset to the opportunities that online content development and sharing afford, they will be in a better position than those who have not developed or shared content, perhaps owing to a pessimistic focus on the potential harms of technology.
SECTION 3
SLIDE 19
For health professionals on Twitter, Professor Murphy’s chapter Twitter and Health flags this platform’s influence on opening-up discussions on health: patients are using Twitter in a form of ‘update culture’ to share intimate information about their health (similar to a public diary of their health, but now as one’s personal Twitter domain on one’s IR scores for followers’ support). Such patients can potentially become a source of expertise whilst contributing to a support community for patients’ confronting the same condition(s). Health professionals can use Twitter to understand their patients’ behaviours better and to pursue research that might otherwise be difficult to arrange patients’ feedback on successful alternative treatments from. Notably, Johns Hopkins university has used the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Untangled project with researchers to capture 40 reviews of alternative and off-label treatments. Its participants and other ALS patients are encouraged to ask questions on the state-of-the-art science (for example, by engaging with the ALS Twitter account). This is similar to IRMCIH experts being contacted around LCHF lifestyle queries. Such shifts for patients, clinicians and researchers reveal how Twitter facilitates the circumvention of traditional controls in healthcare and life-sciences industries. This facilitates a poly-vocal approach in healthcare and the life-sciences versus the traditional uni-directional prescriptions from "The Anointed" experts in the Cathedral combining HE and media.
SLIDE 20
‘Scientific Twitter’ has emerged a popular choice for IRMCIH scholars to update each other, reach out of to sympathetic digital publics in the broader LCHF space. It also provides a platform for public disagreements with CMCDD supporters. For LCHF proponents' examples, please view a Twitter list featuring updates from The Noakes Foundation and other #LCHF advocates at https://twitter.com/i/lists/974554836850032640.
As Professor Noakes describes, by following LCHF proponents on Twitter, he can more easily stay current with their research than via journal notifications. Twitter provides him with as much scholarly information each day as he ever received in the years of his career as a researcher and teacher. He also describes how it supports the sharing of a message with a large number of people beyond one’s own immediate social circle.
SLIDE 21
As a highly influential and accessible platform for news and networking, Twitter provides an interesting example concerning how different forms of capital can be developed via microblogging as social media. Firstly, Twitter is free and easy-to-use, meaning there is no direct cost in ECONOMIC capital to its users. Twitter users own the copyright of the CULTURAL capital (or tweet content) posted via its service. Highly engaged Twitter users can develop SOCIAL CAPITAL via high numbers of followers. Interestingly, the number of Twitter users with more than a million followers is rarer than the number of dollar billionaires! This spotlights what an exclusive achievement cultivating a large Twitter audience is.
Twitter handles with large followings place their producers in a very exclusive category of high influence microblogger. Twitter itself is an influential news platform which does shape traditional media and the public debates it features. While rare, scientific research articles that break on Twitter can become widely shared. Not only does this contribute to an article’s ALTmetrics but, quite likely, a research publication’s citation rate.
SLIDE 22
SLIDE 23
Sadly, this is far from the norm, as Twitter was not designed to facilitate scholarly debate… Rather, Twitter facilitates status updates via concise tweets, rather than the lengthy interchange of in-depth content that a scholarly debate might cover. So, it is unsurprising that the multiple pitfalls shown here can stifle anyone’s attempts at engaging with a ‘public debate’ on Twitter:
- As an asynchronous platform, micro-bloggers can argue at times and in threads that are hard to respond to
- The attribution of user’s re-embedded tweets can be challenging
- A stalker can use the open network to call on hypercritical users to respond to tweets
- Since it is hard to vet responders, a lot of time can be wasted responding to trolls,
- such as sealions, who want to waste one’s time by posing questions, but not learning from responses.
- Twitter users can also abuse its reporting, muting and blocking features for hampering their opponents digital voices.
SLIDE 24
Outside the Twitter platform, there are many other influences that undermine legitimate online debate
These include:
- A gap in guidelines for how debaters might best conduct themselves on particular platforms;
- Legitimate online debate examples seem to be missing in the research literature;
- Online profiles can give a poor indication of who is a genuine debater… for example, the profiles of cyber harassers are not flagged. By contrast, accounts of legitimate, but dissenting scholars, may not be verified with Twitter’s blue tick for expressing "controversial" opinions;
- It may also be hard to distinguish upstanders from the cyberbullies they strongly chastise;
- Online debaters may not know how to use the full range of online modes well;
- For debaters, it can be unclear what the personal rewards and social impact of lengthy online debate is.
SLIDE 25
Overall, a polarized Twitter discussion may create great stats for its usage… and raise the visibility of its most frequent interlocutors… but Twitter’s limitations mean that high-quality debate is an unlikely outcome for participants!
SLIDE 26
Twitter’s algorithms reward controversy and highly emotive engagement with attention. So, if one wants to attract users to discussions, one must foreground what one is AGAINST. This is an effective strategy as it depositions one's opponents (who probably don’t want to be described as representing Fiat Science™!). It also serves as a lightning rod for witnesses and the critical interlocutors they might refer. Focusing on what one is FOR on the left is “nice”, but largely ineffective in terms of visibility. Speaking up in strong terms about what one is against will stoke more intense reactions and attention. Instead of hating the algorithm, savvy Twitter users must stoke IR and CMCDD controversies for lighting Twitter’s dumpster fires!
It’s also useful to be mindful of the limitations of what stats implicitly suggest that one focuses on. For example for scholars, ALTmetrics does not distinguish between sentiment in publications, which may all be negative as shown in the blue text. So, as a responsible online content contributor, one must be mindful of BOTH how one’s aims link to a preferred platform’s stats… and differs from them. For example, one may serve a niche LCHF interest that is unlikely to attract a high number of followers… nevertheless, its social impact in creating a support network for an under-served group of patients, whose examples come to be featured in the IRMCIH research literature, might be the best metric of success for one’s digital content contribution!
SLIDE 27
Thank you for reading this post. I’d also like to thank the OAB Research team for their contribution to the research insights shared here.
SLIDE 28
RELATED RESOURCES
February 2021's OAB research project update is on ResearchGate under News on https://www.researchgate.net/project/Online-academic-bullying.There’s more background on the OAB project in my introductory talk at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pGqxcrmc.
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