Experimenting methodology with Graphryders

[louromainwatson]

During a workshop at the Techno-Anthropological Lab, at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, I had the opportunity to play around with Graphryders. Since it was my first time on the platform, I tried to make sense of the data and proceeded with the following methodological steps.

Looking at the mess of intertwined nods, I needed to find a way to swim through it. Due to my personal interest as an activist-researcher, I decided to look up for words connected with decision-making, action and activism.

I choose first resilience. I analyzed this word in the network in 3 steps:
STEP 1: I wanted to see its neighborhood and see with which other nodes it is connected

STEP 2: I lower the co-occurrence intensity to a level of 4 to 6 edges. For resilience, these were: crisis, community farms, research question, sustainability, housing.

STEP 3: I looked at the posts related to resilience and I tried to draw and interpret similarities and bigger themes out of these posts. The comments weren’t really useful to me for that. I saw international issues and collective support as overall themes.

I reproduced the same approach with participatory design/collaboration
Stronger edges: design intervention, mobility, research question, community-based care.
Overall themes from the posts: transfer of knowledge, collaboration, community

And with sharing knowledge
Stronger edges: community-base care, migration, research question, neighborhoods
Overall themes from the posts: activism, community, collaboration

Louise Romain Watson, student researcher at the Techno Anthropological Lab, AAU CPH.

[alberto]

Welcome @louromainwatson, and thanks for this great piece of analysis. It was really nice to see how students – even those who had never coded before – took to the methodology, though Louise was by far the superstar in that session. You can see my own walkthrough (referred to an earlier dataset than the one you analysed) here.

If you are interested in the contact surface between research and activism, you will find several travelling companions in Edgeryders and OpenCare. I am reminded here of @dfko’s, @ramykim and @winnieponcelet’s commitment to open science – itself a way to make open source human insulin – or of @thomasmboa’s disturbing claim that Open Access might be neocolonial, or @rachel’s citizen science in the service of genomic integrity, or again Harrison’s reflection about Dunbar numbers and what they mean for circles of care.

As we discussed in person, autonomy is a major theme in Edgeryders. @matthias is my main guiding light for hacking our own lifestyles (he certainly hacked his own); @woodbinehealth in the USA and @equipemediczad in France are exploring autonomy with respect to health care specifically.

Everyone, meet Louise. She impressed @melancon, @amelia and myself to no end as a really interesting person to engage with.

Louse, perhaps you want to share something about yourself?

[noemi]

Hi Louise @louromainwatson, super nice to meet you, I’m working with Alberto, Amelia & Co as a sort of host, aka community manager, in the OpenCare conversation. Like you, I have played with graphryder a little in order to help me make sense of my intuitions - knowing the conversations quite well it is good to subject field observations, if you will, to harder science
There is another side to it too - with respect to interpretation. For example I can not learn much from the connection between participatory design and design intervention, research question, community based care. The reasoning is that there’s a group of a couple dozen students who came on board to use opencare as a platform for articulating their research questions and design interventions as part of their semester assignment. So it’s only natural that they co-occur I guess. Which means the weaker edges could be just as interestign…

Are you studying in Aalborg? How’s that working out for you?

[louromainwatson]

Nice to meet you @noemi and thanks for the intro @alberto! Your comment was helpful to understand the wider context of the Open Care conversation. We weren’t introduced to that before doing the exercise so with the information you gave me, my methodology might definitely not be so relevant…

I just started a MSc in Techno-Anthropology at Aalborg University, in the Copenhagen campus. It’s going really well, I’m currently preparing for the final group report and exams in the coming weeks. I’m looking forward to the next semester, where we’ll actually learn various digital and mapping tools, and merge them with our anthropological competencies. I have a background in social and cultural anthropology, so I’m familiar with the methods of social science but not at all with more technical tools. I’m always eager to learn more about new ways to look at and make sense of data!