Affinity Spaces as an Analytical Lens for Attending to Temporality in Critical Data Studies: The Case of COVID-19-Related, Educational Twitter Communication

Abstract

This chapter is based on an analysis of Germany’s biggest education-related Twitter hashtag before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the reconfiguration of the central actors and topics along the #twlz hashtag to trace the change in pandemic-related communication about education. Specifically, we focus on two arguments developed by education scholars as responses to the COVID-19 crisis: educational technology providers and political actors increasingly turn to social media to mediate their COVID-19 crisis management; at the same time, educational technologies are increasingly being positioned as solutions to the educational challenges posed by the pandemic. Using an analytical framework of affinity spaces, we extend on the hashtag studies and understand the #twlz hashtag as an ongoing process of associating various actors, topics, and things. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis, we addressed questions of how educational technology providers and political actors reconfigured the #twlz affinity space and how suitable the concept of affinity space is for studying crisis through Twitter hashtags. We identify shifts in topics and actors central to the #twlz affinity space as a reaction to the national and regional educational crisis management over time and trace the practices through which these shifts unfold. With our empirical investigation of educational Twitter communication as practices of reconfiguration rather than content redistribution, we contribute to new perspectives for critical data studies (in education) conceptually and methodologically.