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#AEJMC15 is just around the corner! This year I am truly thrilled to be traveling to San Francisco to co-present a study about social media education in the college classroom.
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Last blog post I discussed the second project in my applied research class, a sentiment analysis of Tweets using Yoshikoder – a free computer-assisted content analysis program from Harvard.
As promised, I want to share my assignment, and my handout for students that teaches them how to use Yoshikoder. Before we do the project, however, I do a brief in class activity to get students learning how to use Yoshikoder. So let’s start there for today’s post. And next post, I’ll share the assignment itself.
PART 1: THE SET UP
What I like to do, is present the problem to the students via the project assignment. Then, we go back and start learning what we’d need to do to solve the problem. So, after lecturing about what sentiment analysis is and why it is important, I get students introduced first to the idea of constructing a coding sheet for keywords by taking a list of keywords and adding them to categories.
First, we talk about the idea in class, and I show them some simple examples, like: If I wanted to code a sample for the presence of “sunshine” – what words would I need? Students brainstorm things like start, sun, sunny, sunshine, etc., etc.
We discuss the importance of mutual exclusivity, being exhaustive, etc.
I show an example from my dissertation which looked at agenda setting topics on Twitter.
On the class day before I introduce Yoshikoder to the class, students do a practice assignment where I give them a list of random terms related to politics and elections. They then have to create “positive” and “negative” content categories using the terms. The terms aren’t necessarily well fit for this exercise, which gets them thinking a bit… They then hand code a sample of Tweets I provide about two different politicians. I tend to use the most recent election. So, in this case Obama and Romney. They are frustrated by having to hand code these Tweets – but a little trick is to do a search for the exact phrases in the Tweet files on the computer and they are done fairly quickly. Ok, so on the next class period:
1) Practice with Yoshikoder We do the same basic task, but this time they learn to program their “positive” and “negative” categories into Yoshikoder. They then load the Tweets (which I have saved as a txt file) and analyze them for the presence of their positive and negative content categories. This is a great point to stop and have students assess the reliability between what they hand coded and what the computer coded. Often, there will be discrepancies. And this makes for a great opportunity for discussion.
Here is the activity that I use in class. I also provide Tweets that I’ve downloaded using the search terms for the politician/candidate I’m using in the activity (e.g., Obama; Romney) in plain text format so Yoshikoder can read it. Also, see the below handout which I provide students to show them how to use Yoshikoder and how to program, and run the analyses I just described.
As I mentioned above, I create a handout that I like to give students that explains the different functionalities of Yoshikoder and how to run the analyses. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, I like to provide handouts. And the one below isn’t one of my more elaborate handouts. But it provides a quick overview with some screen shots to show what buttons need to be clicked. This is super helpful if you are trying to learn Yoshikoder, or want to use it alongside the activity (discussed in this post or the project discussed in my last post, and which I will provide in my next blog post).
EDIT: The assignment is now up. See the post.
If you’d like to learn more about using Yoshikoder, I found this great tutorial:
– Cheers! Matt
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Thanks to everyone who read my first post in this three-part tutorial on becoming a Google Scholar Power User: advanced features of Google Scholar search.
If you haven’t read it, check it out. If you have, let’s get started with part 2! Here we go! (Note: Post #3 is also available now)
To get the most out of Google Scholar, including the library feature discussed in the last post, you’ll need a Google Scholar profile. If you don’t have one, I highly recommend setting one up. Here’s why:
A Google Scholar profile has many benefits. It is a public profile that provides author photo, institutional affiliation and contact information, and importantly an interactive list of all articles a particular scholar has published. (Get started with Google Scholar profiles). Google Scholar automatically populates your list of research articles by associating your name with articles it has indexed. You can also add co-authors, and keywords for your research agenda.
Here are 8 great benefits of a Google Scholar Profile:
1) Help people find your work. Remember that author feature I discussed int he previous post? Google Scholar search results allow searchers to click an author’s name to see what else they’ve published. This links directly to your Google Scholar profile with the list of all your research articles. If you have a website/blog, you can add a link so people can connect with you.
2) Track Citations of Your Work. What’s really great, is your Google Scholar profile summarizes some really informative stats.
This includes the number of citations for each article you’ve published, and up to date summary statistics across time. For example, here is my Google Scholar profile.
These numbers are helpful to have! For example, when doing my mid-tenure review, I provided a brief context / explanation of each publication I had (this was a recommendation made to me by a faculty member). The purpose was to provide an explanation of the significance of the work, and how it related to my research agenda. I noted the # of citations particular publications had received according to Google Scholar.
3) Follow New Citations. You can easily follow new citations of your work, and get Google Alerts emails when articles are published that mention your published works. This is great to know who is citing you, the impact your work is having, as well as finding articles related to your research interest that you may want to read.
4) Follow New Article. Have something in press and want to know when it is published? Go to your profile and click “Follow new articles.” You’ll get an email alert when the time comes!
5) Library. As discussed in the previous post on Google Scholar, you need a profile to use this feature. See explanation in last post.
6) Recommendations – Having a Google Scholar profile enables you to get recommendations. I’ll discuss those in our next post.
7) Easily Find The Work of Your Favorite Scholars You can see the work of scholars whose research you enjoy by searching an authors name in Google Scholar search, or directly from your profile page (assuming they have a Google Scholar profile).
8) Follow Favorite Scholars. Want to get alerts every time a particular scholar publishes something new? Go to their scholar profile and click “follow new articles.” You’ll get an email alert every time they publish something. You can also follow new citations of their work, to receive emails every time someone cites their work.
See all my academic Tips, Tricks, and Productivity Posts.
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This is Part 1 in a 3-part Google Scholar tutorial to help you become a Google Scholar Power User.
I love Google Scholar. It is useful for not only your research agenda, but also it is a tool to teach your students about.
When teaching students about finding academic research, no discussion is complete without Google Scholar. In fact, I tell my students this is my go to source… though I’m sure the library probably wouldn’t be happy to hear that.
Google Scholar’s primary purpose is as a search engine for scholarly articles. Simply goto: scholar.google.com and search for an article title, subject (e.g., a theory, construct), keyword, or author.
There’s much more to GScholar than a simple search. GScholar has some little known (and some very new!) features that are very useful. Here’s how to become a Google Scholar Power User, Part 1 – Advanced Search Features: (See: Post #2 in this series on Google Scholar Profiles).
Great Benefits!
It works just like Google, but it indexes academic publications. Many libraries are linked with Google Scholar, such that if you search Google Scholar and an article comes up that your school library has, you can access it directly through your search engine results. (While this often happens automatically when on campus, you can find out if your library has the article when away from campus as well. Go to your settings, click library, and do a search for your universities library. Then click save).
Another great benefit is that sometimes articles are hosted online in various places, and you can find access to those articles that you would otherwise not have access to through your library.
Identifying this access is easy. To the right of the search result, you will see [PDF] available from XYZ or [HTML] available from. For an example, here is a search for my own research . Notice how the “Getting Political on Social Network Sites” is available as HTML from the online journal First Monday.
See an article that you want to get access to, but your library doesn’t have it and you don’t see a PDF version offered in the search results? Click “## versions” directly under the search result description. Sometimes, the primary result that Google shows does not provide access to the article, but alternative versions do. By clicking “## versions”, you may find that another version of the article is available online.
When conducting research, we’re often looking for research on a particular theory, construct, etc. So, if we find an article that fits our search goals, wouldn’t it be great to see what other articles are similar? The “Related Articles” link under the search entry does just that. For example, if I find an article on agenda setting in social media in a search result, and want to see more like it, rather than try a new search query, I’ll click “related articles” under the article I like for a whole host of articles related to agenda setting on social media.
The cited by feature offers a similar benefit to the “related articles” feature. It is very helpful because you can see who has cited this work. Why is that great? Because if the article you have found is of interest, likely those works that cited it are related and may be helpful! More so, they may have built on that study and thus their theory and findings may provide more recent insights and advancements to the topic you’re studying.
If you want to see more articles by a specific author, click an author’s name (such as my name in the example above). This will take you to the author’s profile on GScholar (if they have one) where you can see all the articles they’ve published. This is something I’ll discuss more in a future post.
Want the APA or MLA citation format for the article in your search result? Click cite. A window pops up and you can choose the citation you need. Quick. Easy. Super helpful. You can also import into particular format styles.
This is a new feature and one I just discovered. It works sort of like how Mendely lets you create a library of articles. You need a Google Scholar account to use this feature – which is of course free and connected to your Google account.
What you get, is an online custom list of articles. When you enable Library, you are asked if you want to import all articles you’ve cited. That is, Google indexes all the articles you have cited in the online publications Google has associated with you.
To access your library click “My library” at scholar.google.com. To add articles to your library, in a search result, you can click “save” to save that article directly from search results into your library.
It seems the deleting articles requires you to click on them individually and then click delete. I found no mass editing.
You can set up labels to organize articles into categories. For example, I may have a label “politics” another “social networks” and another “blogs.” By clicking an article in your library, then clicking the ‘labels’ drop down you can create and select labels.
This is a brand new feature and it has a lot of potential. Given that I’m a big Mendeley user, the library feature may be redundant. But I’m going to play with it and see if it has added benefit. I do like the idea that it provides direct access to articles available online.
Here is the How to and FAQ of Google Scholar Libraries
The next 2 posts in this Google Scholar Tutorial go beyond the basics of Google Search search results into Recommendations and Google Profiles. Check them out:
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I hope everyone is staying warm! Here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, we’ve got some terribly cold weather heading our way tonight!
I want to take a moment to share some news from the research side of my life in academia. 🙂 As you know, I research social media and civic and political participation.
I’m very excited because this past Friday, my latest co-authored study was published online in the journal New Media and Society.
This study, “Social Media and Mobiles as Political Mobilization Forces for Young Adults: Examining the Moderating Role of Political Expression in Political Participation,” is an extension of our earlier articles: “More harm than good? Online media use and political disaffection among college students in the 2008 election” (2013) in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and 2010’s Mass Communication & Society piece, ““Did social media really matter? College students’ use of online media and political decision making in the 2008 election.”
Social Media and Mobiles really seeks to further investigate the seemingly important role of online political expression (such as posting political videos to YouTube, Tweeting about politics, or posting to Facebook, etc.) in political participation. Particularly, the study looks at what role online expression may play in moderating any effects of political media use on participation. Additionally, this study investigated political smart phone app use, something not investigated in the prior two studies.
Here is the abstract:
A web survey of college students was conducted to examine whether online political expression moderates the effects of political media use on political participation. Results showed that online political expression enhanced the effects of political mobile apps, traditional offline and online media, and social media on political participation. Implications are discussed for a mobilizing role of online media in the democratic process for young adults.
You can see my other posts on social media research.
Cheers!
Matt
photo CC zoonabar
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Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!
Exciting News! This week’s post is a quick announcement those interested in research on social media and civic and political participation!
My latest publication with my colleague, former fellow WSU graduate student, and good friend Masahiro Yamomoto is now available for “early view” online. As you know, I research new and social media and civics / politics.
Published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, the article “More harm than good? Online media use and political disaffection among college students in the 2008 election” is a follow up to our 2010 publication “Did social media really matter? College students’ use of online media and political decision making in the 2008 election.”
“Where Did Social Media really Matter?” asked whether social media and online expression on social media sites were related to positive political outcomes, namely political self-efficacy and situational political involvement, “More Harm Than Good?” asks whether these media are related to political disaffection. Specifically, we looked at political cynicism, apathy, and skepticism.
While cynicism – lack of confidence or trust in the political system, and apathy – indifference or lack of interest in politics, are both negative, skepticism isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Skepticism falls short of rejecting politics or the process of politics, but it is characterized by a disbelief and thus a need to gather more information about what one learns in the media about political issues, candidates, etc.
So what did we find? Attention to social media was related to cynicism and apathy, and related negatively with skepticism. However, there was a positive relationship between online expression and skepticism.
In short, as our previous research suggests, paying attention to political content on social media may not have played as positive a role for young adults in the 2008 election as some have suggested. The story, of course, is not the same for online expression – so why is that?
We must of course consider all the limitations of the study. And keep in mind that this is 1 study and 1 sample. Please read the study to learn more about these concepts, related research, the sampling design, limitations, and other important considerations.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this paper was presented at AEJMC 2012.
All my blog posts on social media research.
Cheers!
-Matt
photo CC Tom Lohdan
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.
Hope everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving break!
A recent article published in Studies in Higher Education asks: Why do academics blog?
Hmm. I guess it seemed obvious. Why does anyone blog? Fame, fortune…? Then I got thinking. Yeah, why do academics blog?
Of course, as an academic and a blogger, I had to read the article. It is titled: “Why do Academics Blog? An Analysis of Audiences, Purposes, and Challenges.”
Articles such as Why Academics Should Blog by McGuire at Huffington Post, say that people should blog for a number of reasons as “the point of academia is to expand knowledge,” and the hard to accept but admittedly true: “because some of your ideas are dumb.”
Of course, there are other reasons too, like promoting your ideas and that your blog is part of / and builds your reputation. The authors of the research article wonder if this is in fact true – why do academics blog? By investigating 100 academic blogs via content analysis , the authors produce an interesting look inside the real reasons why academics blog.
This got me thinking about why I blog.
Why do I blog?
When I created this blog, I spent lots of time working on who I was writing for, and how I wanted to name my blog. I attempted to articulate that in my “About this blog” page. I’ll summarize:
Social media education is a new and emerging field. I want to be a part of that conversation.
To expand:
I teach social media. I have a vested interest in growing with the field. To be great at my job, I need to grow, change, adapt. I need to constantly learn. So, I want to learn and reflect on what I learn. But I believe I can also help the field grow. I want to share my knowledge. Maybe by talking about my experience, I can help other educators, or get people thinking about social media education. And too, I want to meet others with similar interests and goals.
How has a Blog has been helpful to me?
Oh, this list could go on and on. So here are a quick few:
I hope you enjoy the research article!
Why do you blog? How has blogging opened opportunities for you? Are you thinking about blogging but haven’t started?
Have a happy Thanksgiving!
– Cheers!
Matt
photo – creative commons, opensourceway