Linguistic analysis

This chapter illustrates strategies for analyzing digital language by describing our research on #ufotwitter, an online network of UFO investigators. We demonstrate how to use (1) theoretical sampling to focus analysis; (2) mixed-methods research to leverage quantitative metadata; and (3) team-based collaboration spanning multiple disciplines. Employing these strategies enabled us to discover a culturally specific form of what we call evidential sociability, social interaction focused on circulating and evaluating evidence: within #ufotwitter, evidence that participants themselves mark as unreliable correlates with dramatically higher downstream engagement, a phenomenon we term the strength of weak evidence.