Digital Discourse Analysis

Friday, September 17, 2021, 2pm-5pm (EST)

The changes brought on by digital technology over the last two decades have profoundly altered the ways that most of us live our lives. Scholars of digital discourse believe that this ever-increasing digitization of daily life calls for increasing analytic attention to how we, as humans, both construct – and are constructed by – all of the digital texts that we produce, consume, and interact with. Digital discourse analytic research is driven by our curiosity to better understand how our contemporary realities are shaped by and reflected in, online texts and digital practices alike. In this workshop, we will discuss key methodological considerations involved in carrying out a discourse analytic project, from start to finish. Topics to include the following:

• Refining your focus: identifying an original topic and crafting a literature review from diverse disciplinary sources.
• Data sampling: why bigger may not always be better.
• Finding the right framework: diverse approaches to (digital) discourse analysis.
• Beyond tools: organizing and managing your dataset, creating a system that works best for you.
• Research ethics: developing an informed, contextualized and culturally appropriate approach.
• The best venues for your work: doing your homework and researching your audience.