Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “research”
- kudos:
It annoys me when a journal asks a reviewer to address specific prompts; it annoys me more when I only realize this after writing my review.
appearance on Dialogue Out Loud podcast
- kudos:One of my most recent articles—a piece on technology, naming, and legitimacy in the Latter-day Saint tradition—was published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Publishing in Dialogue has been a wonderful opportunity. It’s a niche journal, so it may never reach the breadth of audience that I usually aim for in publishing. However, that niche focus has also come with a number of benefits. I want to write more about this soon, but the purpose of this post is just to draw attention to one of these benefits: the in-house podcast(s) produced by the Dialogue team.
new publication: far-right and anti-feminist influences on a Mormon Twitter hashtag
- kudos:I am very happy to announce that a paper I wrote with Amy Chapman is finally published and available open access in the Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association (I have also archived a PDF of the article on my website, available at this link). Amy and I began this project in the spring/summer of 2019, so it’s a relief to finally see our first paper in print. In short, the paper is a descriptive look at tweets using the #DezNat hashtag; DezNat, short for either Deseret Nation or Deseret Nationalism (depending on who you ask) is a movement of arch-conservative Mormons on Twitter and elsewhere on the internet.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Eternity in the Ether: A Mormon Media History, by Gavin Feller
- kudos:I have been looking for this kind of book for a long time, and some of my recent publications would have been stronger if this had come out in time for me to reference it beforehand. It’s not perfect: Some wording is awkward and the conceptual framework (while interesting) could be stronger. However, it’s invaluable for the history it offers and I expect to cite it regularly in the future.
new(ish) publication: inauthentic accounts on teacher Twitter
- kudos:This article has been available online for nearly two years, but since I don’t have any previous posts about it, I’m happy to announce that a study of mine with Dan Krutka has just been assigned to an issue at the Journal of Research on Technology in Education. A number of years ago, Twitter released some large datasets of tweets associated with accounts created as part of various governments’ information operation efforts.
technology-mediated authority in early Mormonism
- kudos:As I wrote earlier, I recently appeared on the Salt Lake Tribune’s Mormon Land podcast to discuss a recent publication in which I discuss the history of official Latter-day Saint domain names. Near the end of the interview, David Noyce (managing editor of the Tribune and one of the podcast hosts) asked me the “so what” question—sure, this history is interesting, but what’s the takeaway? Here’s (part of) how I answered:
- kudos:
A friend of mine who works outside academia wrote yesterday to say that she thought my most recent article made for good road trip reading, and I honestly don’t know if anyone’s ever paid a higher compliment to my research.
media coverage of recent article on Latter-day Saint online presence
- kudos:I recently wrote about a new article of mine in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought where I trace the history of the official domain names of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This past week, I was lucky enough for the fine folks at the Salt Lake Tribune to take interest in the article. Peggy Fletcher Stack wrote a summary of my findings in this (unfortunately paywalled) article, which appeared on Sunday.
- kudos:
Starting to get notices about my Twitter API access being suspended. So long, Twitter research: You were an important part of my career, and I’ll miss you.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The poop emoji: a legal history - The Verge'
- kudos:Fascinating read—and one that reminds me that academic journal software doesn’t always render emoji either, which is a problem for social media research. link to ‘The poop emoji: a legal history - The Verge’
📝 writeblog: spent 1:03:40 on 'publish teachers on far-right social media study'
- kudos:I have not been good about logging writing progress recently, but I want to try to get back into it. Met with Dan today to work together on Discussion. Lots of wrinkles to iron out, but we’re very close to submitting this!
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Twitter’s $42,000-per-Month API Prices Out Nearly Everyone | WIRED'
- kudos:RIP my Twitter research. Glad I have other irons in the fire… link to ‘Twitter’s $42,000-per-Month API Prices Out Nearly Everyone | WIRED’
high school class rankings and the value-laden non-objectivity of quantitative measures
- kudos:At the beginning of my senior year of high school, Tyler and I were neck and neck in class rankings—if memory serves, he was slightly ahead. This never got in the way of our friendship. We had spent too much time playing the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Roleplaying Game together, and a few years earlier, we’d even spent one memorable night with our mutual friend Chris hiking repeatedly back and forth between Tyler’s house and mine so that we could find the right hardware for hooking up someone’s GameCube to my family’s venerable TV so that we could play TimeSplitters 2.
📝 writeblog: spent 0:54:37 on 'publish religion in Gab communication study'
- kudos:Spent some time reading through Torba’s posts. It’s interesting how the pivot to hardcore Christian nationalism happened right around the 2020 election.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:25:53 on 'publish religion in Gab communication study'
- kudos:I’ve been interested for the past couple of years in how Andrew Torba uses religious rhetoric in his posts on the official Gab blog. This project is very much in the early stages, but I want to submit a proposal to a conference next week, so I’ve been going through data to try to get a fee for what’s happening—and what to use as my “sample.”
📝 writeblog: spent 2:02:16 on 'publish teachers on far-right social media study'
- kudos:Put together a conference proposal while my co-author kept working on his part of the findings.
📝 writeblog: spent 2:02:11 on 'publish ClassDojo and conflation of ed tech platforms study'
- kudos:Spent some time putting together a rough outline and some tables today. It still blows my mind what software students equate with ClassDojo.
📝 writeblog: spent 0:47:30 on 'publish scraping library online presence study'
- kudos:Spent some time manually reviewing websites today to prepare for later web scraping. I’ll have to figure out how to work with some Wix sites, which are structured oddly behind the scenes.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:45:11 on 'publish beliefs about Canvas study'
- kudos:Had a good meeting this morning to put together a survey instrument for the study. I think we’re close!
📝 writeblog: spent 0:16:51 on 'publish digital religion as international religion study'
- kudos:Spent a few minutes idly working on a web scraper for this.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:36:18 on 'publish teachers on far-right social media study'
- kudos:Kept on writing! Had some productive conversations about tables and worked on an AECT proposal related to the project.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The End of Grading | WIRED'
- kudos:Somewhat meandering read, but I think there are interesting implications for both teaching and research. link to ‘The End of Grading | WIRED’
📝 writeblog: spent 0:34:08 on 'publish LDS Freedom Forum study'
- kudos:It’s been over a year since Levi Sands, Amy Chapman, and I started talking about doing a topic model analysis of the LDS Freedom Forum, an online space for far-right Mormonism. I’ve usually been the one slowing us down, but today, I finally checked off a task that’s been on my lost for a month and a half. I’m really excited about the project, I just need to stop dragging my feet.
- kudos:
One of my academic pet peeves is when people use the word rigor as a validating synonym for something else, like “quantitative” or “giving out lots of Cs.” Rigor is important, but narrow definitions aren’t useful.
📝 writeblog: spent 0:55:21 on 'publish digital religion as international religion study'
- kudos:Instead of grading (😬), I spent some time grabbing links and then starting to build a web scraper, though that’s enough of a pain that I might ask a friend to borrow his CrowdTangle access.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:27:22 on 'publish Red Pill influences on DezNat study'
- kudos:Went through page proofs today! Excited that the paper is so close to publication.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:12:41 on 'publish digital religion as international religion study'
- kudos:I’m helping organize the Global Mormon Studies 2023 online conference, so I’ve been trying to figure out what (if anything) I would submit for myself. I’ve been wanting to do something about the online (and, thereby, intentionally international) Toronto Community of Christ congregation, but I’ve had trouble figuring out what exactly that would be. Today, an idea clicked. I was going through their YouTube and Facebook videos for some early data collection when I realized just how different the two platform experiences are.
- kudos:
Pleased to see that page proofs I’m reviewing have preserved the emojis in quoted tweets. It’s frustrating for this social media researcher how many journal publication platforms do not support them.
📝 writeblog: spent 3:01:14 on 'publish teachers on far-right social media study'
- kudos:Spent some time polishing the front end and some other finished bits of the paper.
📝 writeblog: spent 0:33:17 on 'publish ClassDojo and conflation of ed tech platforms study'
- kudos:Met with Sarah and Daniela today to review the data and discuss where to go from here. I have some new tasks, and we have some new ideas—looking forward to seeing where things go!
Cory Doctorow on behaviorism
- kudos:After bouncing off of it a year or so ago, I recently decided to restart Cory Doctorow’s novel Walkaway (which led NPR reporter Jason Sheehan to describe Doctorow as “Super-weird in the best possible way”). The audiobook is excellent, and since I started a couple of days ago, it’s displaced my podcast listening and given me another chance to wrestle with Doctorow’s ideas here. There is way too much going on (and I’m not far enough into the book) for me to engage with the underlying message of the novel (or even to be sure of what it is yet), but one passage stood out to me so much this morning that I have to write it down now.
📝 writeblog: spent 0:55:26 on 'publish ClassDojo and conflation of ed tech platforms study'
- kudos:Wrapped up categorizing apps/software into distinct categories. Perhaps unsurprisingly, students identified more LMSs (or SISs) and content/assessment software than behavior management or communication apps (the two main things ClassDojo does).
📝 writeblog: spent 1:44:56 on 'publish teachers on far-right social media study'
- kudos:Met with Dan today for writing work. I finished a section on how the admins’ openness to far-right ideas allowed racist and conspiratorial thinking to enter what was purportedly a teachers’ social media group.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:46:49 on 'publish beliefs about Canvas study'
- kudos:I recently started a new project with colleague Meghan Dowell where we’re hoping to learn about students’ and instructors’ understanding of how Canvas works (taking some inspiration from a 2017 article by Nick Proferes). I spent time going through Canvas documentation and meeting with Meghan about our survey instrument.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:04:29 on 'publish DezNat and authority study'
- kudos:Spent some time this afternoon finishing up a conceptual framework section which makes a case for using Weberian language for describing how this movement thinks about authority.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:40:52 on 'publish teachers on far-right social media study'
- kudos:I met with Dan and spent time writing up our findings on how the admins of this teachers’ group were swimming in far-right discourses in their overall activity on the platform. No real surprise that they allowed those influences into a teachers’ group.