Linguistic approaches to short-form social media (BAAL/CUP)

Location: University of Nottingham (keynote lectures recorded)

Keynote speakers: Dr Ruth Page (University of Birmingham) and Dr Nelya Koteyko (QMUL)

Lightning talk speakers: Dr Tamsin Parnell (University of Nottingham), Dr Alex Krendel (University of Southampton), Dr Caroline Tagg (The Open University) and Jai Mackenzie (Birmingham Newman University).

Schedule:

9am – 9.15am: Welcome and registration

9.15am – 10.15am: Invited lecture I: Dr Ruth Page

10.15am - 11.45am: Lightning talks

11.45 – 12.30pm: Lunch

12.30pm – 1.30pm: Invited lecture II: Dr Nelya Koteyko

1.30pm – 2.30pm: Workshop in small groups (theme: Methods and ethical approaches to analysing short-form social media data)

2.30pm – 2.45pm: Comfort break

2.45pm – 3.30pm: Speed dating / networking session

3.30pm – 4.15pm: Roundtable / full group discussion and talk about potential publications

Seminar objectives

(1) To explore the linguistic approaches available to analyse short-form social media (such as TikTok videos, Instagram reels, and Tweets)

(2) To explore the research ethics of gathering data from these platforms

(3) To explore the ongoing linguistic research on these platforms

(4) To set the groundwork for a special issue or edited collection (CUP; Bloomsbury) on linguistic approaches to short-form social media.

Rationale

A growing body of research is focusing on short-form social media content such as TikTok posts, Instagram reels, and tweets. Despite this, there is a lack of linguistically oriented work that grapples with how to ethically collect and linguistically examine data from these platforms. In this timely seminar, we will explore emerging linguistic work on short-form social media and consider the ethics and practicalities of collecting and analysing this data. With a focus on video data in particular, we will contribute to the semiotic turn in the field.

We will have two keynote speakers (Dr Ruth Page and Dr Nelya Koteyko). We will also have four lightning talks on different projects involving digital short-form social media data, addressing topics such as eating disorders content and the future of human reproduction.

In our small-group workshop session, we will consider a range of analytical approaches, including content analysis, and multimodal/mediated discourse analysis. This workshop will involve pre-prepared publicly available data produced by institutions. Participants will work together to devise a methodological approach to analyse an aspect of this data, and then present their ideas.

We will stream and record both lectures to allow those who cannot afford or cannot travel to attend, too. The lightning talks, networking and workshop will only be available in-person.

Host or Publisher BAAL, Tamsin Parnell, Katy Humberstone