NGI Ethnography -- Preliminary Results for Community Members

[alberto]

Wow, super interesting!

First, a methodological point: the very high modularity that appears in the first picture (which represents all co-occurrences) is an artifact of SSNA itself. The cliques like the one highlighted in blue are induced by a single, dense post which is coded with 5-10 codes, which then, by definition, form a clique. On the other hand, the fact that the graph is connected (all nodes in the same in connected component) is not artifact of SSNA. The graph that has a more meaningful interpretation is the second one, where only the edges between codes that co-occur at least twice are preserved.

@amelia

community members find an underlying tension between acknowledging the ecological costs of the tech industry and findings ways to develop technological tools to protect the climate. These two points characterise a vagueness, reluctance and caution on the part of the ER community when it comes to making bold or definitive claims about tech and the climate, which may explain why codes thus far are more topical (sketching the broad areas that community members have been interested in discussing) than analytical or solutions-focussed.

It’s just an intuition, but I expect this finding to be representative of the broader debate, not just of the NGI Forward community.

@amelia

One way to cut through the opacity of these discussions would be to directly ask users to define the term while also offering concrete examples of its application, e.g. in design, research, tech innovation etc.

One for @johncoate and @MariaEuler!

@amelia

n short, we are missing the meat of these issues because users are not engaging with them on a personal level and instead are drawing on general and ‘objective’ material. Going forward, we can use the fact that we are working with tech experts to our advantage by asking them more biographically oriented questions, which may help us tease out personal narratives and interpersonal connections. Asking our informants to tell us what motivated them to work in tech, how they use the internet on a daily basis, etc. can help us capture a more dynamic picture of the internet of humans. We can also push them to dig deeper in their analyses and offer opinions on specific questions and future potentials through more pointed and guided enquiry.

This is also very useful analysis, to inform community management in the months to come.

@nadia

Is it ok for us to compose a version of this adapted for the community members’ public discussion?

I completely support this idea!