Exploring Gender, Race, and Sexuality with Social Media Data

Abstract

We present a full day, hands-on workshop that will provide an opportunity for researchers in our community to explore social media data and ask questions about the intersectionalities of gender, race, and sexuality. We will discuss scholarly questions and methods related to application of social media data analysis and the implications of using, presenting, and communicating results in research contexts. Workshop participants will learn how to access and analyze data using various tools and methods, drawing specifically on a Twitter dataset collected May-June 2014 during the trending hashtag #YesAllWomen. Selected participants will also present their own work to foster opportunities for targeted discussion and continued collaboration. The goals of this workshop are not only to build community but also to enable researchers to begin collecting and analyzing social media data to further their own work. The workshop emphasizes the importance of analyzing social media data ethically, respecting and engaging the sometimes vulnerable and marginalized populations who may have generated the data.