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@online{Karsgaard2018,

title = {Canadian Pipeline Politics: Mapping (visual) discourse in platform spaces},

author = {Carrie Karsgaard and Lucia Bainotti and Serena Del Nero and Giacomo Flaim and Michael Hockenhull and Maggie MacDonald and Antonio Martella and Erika Valderrama and Gabriel Valerio},

editor = {The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI)},

url = {https://digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2018PipelinePolitics

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ieIJDHakx44Glre3VRdJu2Z6o60is22aIJoRobw6YF4/edit#slide=id.p},

year  = {2018},

date = {2018-08-02},

urldate = {2018-08-02},

abstract = {Methodological findings: Twitter



Twitter’s free-form user location field enables political expression where location-identifiers have political significance; in the Canadian landscape, for instance, users may identify according to Indigenous place names rather than officially sanctioned place names.



The implication for digital methods research is that user location provides a means of exploring issue alignment and political stance for issues with geographical components.



Methodological findings: Instagram



An analytical challenge - but also an opportunity - is posed by Instagram’s multiple discursive spaces - images, text, and hashtags - as they are variously used over time. The project prototypes a comparative approach to these multiple spaces through analysis of each through multiple time slices, including analysis of the linkages between various discourses where possible (i.e. by hashtag-image and text-image analysis). Included is a new approach to text-image analysis using Cortext, which allows exploration of the user-generated text in Instagram posts, beyond what is available via hashtag analysis.



Taken together, multiple maps reinforce certain issue patterns through their repeated representation in various visualizations; at the same time, individual maps reveal nuances of the issue that only emerge through a single discourse (whether visual, textual, or connective via hashtags). This project thus demonstrates how critical discourse analysis and visual analysis may be conducted at multiple and intersecting levels through a critical cartographical approach, enabling a more robust understanding of the issue as it is performed online.



Substantive Findings



Our findings indicate that when analyzed as above, the tools embedded in both Twitter and Instagram allow us to infer discursive alignment with issue positioning, not only for/against the key issue, but also within sub-groups, allowing a nuanced view of the issue. For instance, within anti-pipeline sentiment, analysis of locations, hashtags, text, and images reveals competing ideals between protection of the land (as pristine), ownership of the land (as a Vancouver resident), and stewardship of the land (as already occupied by Indigenous peoples). By tracing these discursive groups over time, we see increasing overlap within our issue network visualizations, where distinct clusters are replaced by heterogenous networks, indicating that the pipeline issue may function as a boundary object, bringing various publics closer together.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {online}

}