Digital Humanities as Rhetoric

An analysis of the twitter bot 

"@ThinkPieceBot" 's influence and activity.

(I apologize for the watermark!!)

For a different twitter bot analysis, check out these blogs! 

Jessica 

Cody 

Sam

Plan for Diffusion through Social Media

Research Article being Diffused:

The Scientific Reproduction of Gender Inequality

 A Discourse Analysis of Research Articles on Women’s Entrepreneurship.

Ahl, Helene J. "1 THE SCIENTIFIC REPRODUCTION OF GENDER INEQUALITY A Discourse Analysis of Research Articles on Women’s Entrepreneurship." (2003). 

    1. Summarize

      Create a "Hand Drawn" white board video that demonstrates the key research and conclusions of this paper with an overlaying audio explanation for the illustrations. 

Key points to include: 

-Briefly explain how the author conducted her research (Analyzing over 80 research articles to gain an understanding of the general perception of women in business.) 

-Page 4. Explain the hypotheses about female inferiority and how they were disproved. 

-Page 4: para. 4, and "Constructions of Work and Family" 
from pages 8-9. Explain how the interview questions between men and women differed as well as the perceptions tying family life to women but not men.
(i.e. Woman being asked about how balancing family and work can be difficult while the topic of family is rarely brought up when men are interviewed).

-Bottom of page 5 - page 6. Explain how socially constructed gender roles and traits cause women to be viewed as less motivated in regards to entrepreneurship. 

-Pages 7-8. Describe how authors that refused to give up their secondary sex view of women tried to disregard findings that contradicted their views. ("Making a mountain out of a mole hill", "The self-selected woman", and "The good mother") 

-Illustrate and explain the chart on page 10 that provides ideas on how to shift perceptions and research processes. 

-Explain the problems identified in the final paragraph (funding and publication without likely hurting one's career). 

-Provide a call to action as a conclusion. This should include ideas such as: 

• talking to researchers at your university
• participating in research efforts in order to influence whether or not men and women are treated equally
• writing to popular research journals explaining your desire to see articles that do not place women as a secondary sex

A quick tutorial for creating "Hand-Drawn" videos is included below.

This type of content2 is engaging and appeals to a larger audience than just those in academia.

           Upload the video to a platform such as YouTube and include tags such as “feminism”, “equality”, “business”, “research”, “change”, etc. These tags help to expose the video in appropriate and relevant contexts2. Once the video has been published, create a shorter bit.ly URL that will be used in a later step. 

2. Enlist Help

     Privately contact major twitter accounts that are based on any of the following:

Feminist Communities, 

A Female CEO, 

Business Colleges, 

or 

Research Journals/Publications dedicated to women, gender equality, or business.

(Examples: @FemFormations, @feministstudies, @nwsa, @HeatherRipley, @BASeditors, @feminstitute, @entrepreneur, 

@womenEnt, @Rotmanwomen )

These specific types of accounts (especially ones with women as a central focus) have a good chance of agreeing to post about this topic due to their likely sympathetic view of the argument being made.

3. Create the tweet

 For those pages that accept, ask them to draft a Tweet with the following text:

“Isn’t it time for Women in business to stop being viewed as secondary to Men? (bit.ly url) #BizEquality”

Then, ask them to create a specific “Twitter Card” to accompany their post. This feature provides a preview of the destination site by showing a customized picture and text block. Twitter Cards also include a “Call to Action” button that can be customized with phrases such as, “Learn More”. 

Example of a Twitter Card:

          This visual addition to the tweet will help attract an audience due to its expanded and more appealing form2. 

     

4. Posting

          Once the tweets have been drafted, inform each page to post at 8:45 AM EDT. This is an optimal time to post based on twitter traffic rates. Around 9 AM, there is a significant increase in traffic but not enough to drown out the drafted posts.

5. Social Information Flow2

          Because many of the pages’ followers are likely to view and engage with the provided content, each page’s individual cluster2 will begin to saturate2. Accounts with weak ties2 to the initial clusters will likely be exposed, and conversations alongside the original post will hopefully begin to saturate other clusters.

6. End Goal

          Ultimately, the goal is to reach Business/Entrepreneur Scholars and Researchers either directly or through their associated college’s twitter account. However, the message will be more powerful if it is accompanied by community support and recognition. 

          This support will hopefully be gained as the message is passed from cluster to cluster - reaching groups of people that would not usually be presented with this subject. 

    

Strategies derived from
2 Nahon, Karine, and Jeff Hemsley. Going Viral. Polity, 2013.

For other Social Media Diffusion Plans check out these blogs!

Emily Weaver

Damien Raymond