In the cultural anthropological tradition, we study how people in a group think about things that somehow go together. Using hashtags, we introduce a series of methods to trace the conceptual contours in social media conversations. Hashtags align ideas and reveal the latent structures and symbolic boundaries within the conversation, detecting the domains, features, and sources of tension in the network of diverse perspectives and experiences conveyed in the conversation. We demonstrate how distinctive and affiliated hashtags, Hashtag Network Maps, and ImageQuilts can connect and aggregate concepts and render the shared and divergent meanings that structure the space.
This research features a case study of #homegym tagged messages posted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gym closures disrupted established exercise regimes, while lockdown and work-at-home orders blessed others with newfound time to work out – inciting a spike in demand for gym equipment sales. First, we demonstrate our approach using a sample of Twitter posts with the #homegym hashtag, gathered between March 15 to April 16, 2020, from a COVID-19 database and a selection of Instagram photos. Next, we study the people, messages, and images to map the subgroups, social dynamics, and ideologies that constitute the #homegym leisure space. Finally, we draw methodological and practical implications to assist marketing researchers and practitioners in harnessing social media conversations to derive timely insights.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/44150 |
| Date | 13 October 2022 |
| Creators | Bakker, Dmitri |
| Contributors | Mulvey, Michael S. |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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