Researching academic literacy practices around Twitter : performative methods and their onto-ethical implications

This chapter takes the example of the micro-blogging platform Twitter to explore the nature and implications of research into literacy practices in the ‘digital university’. Drawing on data collected for a study on the use of Twitter by academics at a British university, it compares the different and often contradictory findings that emerged from three datasets. Though focused on the same broad population, the datasets were grounded in three distinct methodological approaches (metric analysis, survey, and ethnography) and responded to different institutional and personal agendas. After a discussion of the data itself, the assumptions embedded within the approaches are unpacked and the implications for locating and researching ‘the Digital’ interrogated. The chapter concludes by addressing the implications of a performative reading of method on research into literacy in the digital university, arguing that researchers should acknowledge the enactments of ‘the Digital’ that emerge through their methods and texts and consider the onto-epistemological and ethical implications of these enactments.