Kim Fernandes - Completed Data Availability Statement Sketch

Data availability statement (in progress) for social media data collected during my dissertation and catalogued in a spreadsheet:

this spreadsheet is designed to catalogue interactions across disability rights activists on social media, between the 2019 - 2022 time period (roughly corresponding to the time i have been doing fieldwork for). although i had initially collected a number of these interactions, such as whatsapp group messages, tweets, and facebook posts, on my phone, a friend who is a historian pointed out that it might be easiest to catalogue them in one location as i started to analyze trends. cataloguing different types of posts (based on who had made them, what platform was used, and a brief note on what the topic was about) also helped me understand how each platform came to be used, and to/for what affect, to mobilize community around a specific cause.

although i had made this spreadsheet for my own tracking purposes, and will likely use it as a way to keep track of the sources that go into this dissertation, i am not certain that i will make it public. in part, this is not to note that the sources on the spreadsheet will not be publicly searchable/available -- on both twitter and facebook, many of the activists that i am in community with, as well as their views on a particular topic, can be found easily when searching. my spreadsheet, however, was much more expansive -- although my dissertation was intended as a way to focus on certification of disability, it has helped me think through the centrality of certification to other issues, and to follow the ways disability rights have been tied to political developments in the country. it is for this reason that i am not sharing the spreadsheet in its entirety. should i use content from it as i start to write up my dissertation, i plan on checking in first with the person who initially shared the content to make sure that i have their permission.

keeping this volume of data and the people who have gathered it anonymous is a central concern to many of my participants and to me. as i write my dissertation and my plan for data sharing evolves, i will return to think about how the data in this spreadsheet might be shared, and with whom.