Twitter Report Step 4

Today, we make sure we have posted our first feeder, which is the spreadsheet with codes and the visuals you have been able to create. To complete the draft of the feeder, follow these steps:

Make sure you have 1) completed a draft of your coding in the spreadsheet, 2) cleaned and standardized the codes, 3) created some basic one-column charts to see basic trends, 4) created some pivot tables and charts to show relationships among your categories, and 5) downloaded at least three charts (at least one basic chart and one pivot table chart) to your laptop.

Go to the Feeder 1.1 Twitter Analysis and Visualizations posting submission form on our web site. Add a title, and then enter the link to your spreadsheet. Also upload the images that you have downloaded with your charts. When finished, select Save.

After you have completed the submission of Feeder 1, we will turn toward working on Feeder 2, which is our first foray into doing secondary university research. We will start by looking at citation options that can help you build the references for your annotated bibliography. For our project, we will compile the five sources in a word processor document. You may also want to investigate some citation management tools.

There are lots of ways to build a bibliography, including composing the entries by hand, so be flexible and look for tools that help. As you work, you will encounter a few possibilities:

In many cases, you will be able to export a citation directly from the library page hosting the resource. Look for a "cite" link or other options for exporting references. You can just use these tools, choosing the correct format--APA--for our first, (social science) report and copying the reference into your document.

In some cases, a piece through the library may not have citation tool available or may not export in the format you want. If so, you can use a tool like ZoteroBib. If you enter the DOI number, it should generate the entry. You can also enter a title, etc.

If it turns out that none of the above options work, you can use the library's citation builder, and input information to create a reference. 

Using materials from the library is great, as they will be solid and the tools above should work readily to create references. If you are using sources from the web, social media, etc. you can often use ZoteroBib to create references automatically. For films, TV shows, etc you can use citation builder. 

Again, explore these tools, combining them as needed to build your bibliography. To check entries or if all else fails, you can use the style guides for the research formats.

After you have looked over these citation tools, you should review the bibliography assignment. You should also look at a couple of samples:

sample bibliography.pdf

Bibliography sample2.pdf

Once you have drafted your annotated bibliography, you can use the Feeder 1.2 Twitter Report Bibliography submission form to upload or link to your bibliography document. 

Finally, we will move on to the Unit 1 Project, Community Discourse Analysis Report that is due (in draft form) on Monday. For review, here is a big-picture sense of what we are hoping to do:

By the end of this unit, you will be able to:

1. Conduct primary research using qualitative coding 
2. Locate and evaluate sources in the social sciences.  
3. Develop visuals to complement research reports 
4. Write a short report to share findings with the public.

Before going any further, I recommend looking over a couple of sample papers. Each of these is a bit longer than our expected composition. You should aim for 4-5 pages, but if it is longer, it is not a problem.

sample paper 1

sample paper 2

sample paper 3

You will notice that these follow some genre expectations in terms of their format. They tend to have:

• An introduction that gives background into the topic
• A methods section that explains how the primary research was conducted
• An analysis/discussion section that discusses patterns and results of the analysis
• A conclusion that points out shortcomings of the research, offers preliminary explanations for findings, or shares comments on the topic.

In many ways, you can break down the composing by thinking about these chunks and what they need to accomplish. For instance,

• the introduction might make use of some of the secondary sources you have used to show the relevance of the topic.
• the methods section will provide insights into how you worked with your data and how you made decisions about the codes. 
• the discussion section will likely make use of the charts you have developed. It will also likely zoom in at times to discuss an individual tweet or user that might be illustrative of some of the points being made.

You don't have to treat the above as a recipe; you might, for instance, weave secondary research into multiple sections of the paper. You might combine the discussion and conclusion sections if you have already made explanations and explored the limits of your research. In general, use the rhetorical situation--sharing your research findings with the public--to guide your composing.