Begin by reading pages 9-25 of this document which introduces you to the concept of coding data; you can read further, but you should get the idea in the opening sections.

Next, create an excel spreadsheet for your Twitter data set. We will work through the details of archiving tweets in class, but here are some links that will be needed:

An active account on Twitter.

Instructions for creating a Twitter Archive Google Spreadsheet. 

You will also need a google account with access to your google drive.

After you have created the google spreadsheet you will most likely want to duplicate the spreadsheet in google or move data to an excel spreadsheet. You can save an excel sheet on your computer by Downloading it from the google spreadsheet. If you are using the TAGS google spreadsheet, remember that any new tweets won't be included in your excel file unless you download and add them.

Next, develop a constraint that will limit the number of tweets to be analyzed in your excel spreadsheet. If you were analyzing tweets related to the hashtag #measles, for instance, you might limit your data set to a 24 hour period. You might decide to eliminate all retweets. Or to explore only retweets to look for patterns. Come up with a way of limiting the number of tweets you will be coding. Your limited set of tweets should have between 200 and 300 tweets. It's possible you will have the opposite problem of not having enough tweets, in which case you may need to allow a bit more time to collect tweets, or consider changing hashtags, or do a comparison of two or more hashtags.

Next, adjust a copy of your spreadsheet to be easier to use, deleted unnecessary columns. Eventually, you will add columns to represent your coding terms.

Next, read through the data, developing on scratch paper or through some other method an initial set of codes. Let the codes evolve as you work through the data.

Revise your codes, coming up with between roughly five and seven terms that can be used to help understand the way the tweets might represent your community or be categorized.

Next, read through all the tweets in the spreadsheet, adding the appropriate codes to the code column.

Next, create some graphs or charts representing the frequencies of the codes. Also explore the visuals in your original TAGS spreadsheet. Insert chart images in your spreadsheet, and then save them as images or screenshots. Save visuals from the TAGS sheet as well if helpful.

When you have completed the coding of all of your limited set of tweets and created several visuals, save your materials. 

When finished, submit all of the materials using our Community Report Tweet Analysis posting.