Interpreting Social Media Data

Abstract

This chapter is all about the challenge of interpreting and ascribing the meaning of social media data. The challenge is brought into sharp relief by court judgements where teams of lawyers spent weeks poring over the meaning of tweets in order to determine if they were threatening or libellous (see Paul Chambers, ‘or I’m blowing the Airport Skyhigh’ tweet in January 2010 or Sally Bercow’s ‘*Innocent face*’ tweet that led to a trial in May 2013). The question of this chapter is: what is happening on the days when a policy idea is widely discussed? The frequency charts profiled in Chapter 6 show dramatic fluctuations in activity directed to specific policy ideas. This raises questions as to what is occurring within that variation. It also raises questions as to what themes are contained within that activity; which of it is new that day; which of it is a continuation of themes from previous days. This chapter focuses on exploring this activity so that we can begin to understand the lifecycle of policy ideas when they are discussed online.