Messy Methods: Queer Methodological Approaches to Researching Social Media

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect Computers and Composition 40 (2016) 60–72

Messy Methods: Queer Methodological Approaches to Researching Social Media Caroline Dadas ∗ Montclair State University English 1 Normal Ave Montclair, NJ 07043 United States Received 16 January 2015; received in revised form 17 April 2015; accepted 16 March 2016

Abstract This article sketches out a queer methodological approach for ethically researching social media websites such as Facebook. Detailing my experiences researching marriage equality on Facebook, I argue that queer theory can help researchers negotiate the public/private continuum that figures so heavily into digital research. During my study, I turned to queer theory to help me with ethical quandaries regarding my relationship with participants, recruitment, and data collection. I detail how, on the one hand, I identified as queer to potential participants, in an effort at being up-front with them; on the other hand, I grew uneasy that some of my Facebook friends would be confused by the fact that I was joining homophobic Facebook groups for the purpose of my research, and I opened up an additional Facebook account as a result. Ultimately, I argue that a queer methodology enables an understanding of how the public/private continuum influences multiple parts of the research process; complicates accepted methodological practices in productive ways; provides a productive lens for exploring social media as a research method. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Queer; private; public; methodology; social media; transparency; marriage equality; techne

Social commentators have referred to 2012–2015 as being watershed years in the advancement of rights for LGBTQ individuals. During these years, President Obama stated that he supports marriage equality; the states in which marriage equality is legal jumped from five in 2011 to 36 as of this writing; and the Supreme Court issued decisions striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and upholding the reversal of Proposition 8 in California. On the heels of these events, many believe that supporters of LGBTQ rights have continued reason for optimism in the immediate years ahead. Behind every passed law or new measure, however, are stories of everyday activists who have advocated for their causes in less publicized ways. In 2012 alone, Kristin Russo and Dannielle Owens-Reid began answering questions about growing up gay on their Tumblr, “Everyone is Gay,” and now tour college campuses to discuss LGBTQ-themed issues; Brian Ellner advocated for marriage equality-supportive legislation in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington by starting The Four 2012, an organization that gained support through multiple YouTube videos, a strong Facebook presence, and an interactive Tumblr (Valinsky, 2012). Aside from their notable commitment to LGBTQ rights, what all of these activists have in common is that they turned to social media to advance their causes.

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Corresponding author. Tel.: +7084206231. E-mail address: [email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2016.03.007 8755-4615/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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While scholars have argued that social media sites represent important locations of rhetorical activity (Burgess & Green, 2009; Dietel-McLaughlin, 2009; O’Riordan & Phillips, 2007; Williams, 2009), methodological approaches for researching such sites requires continued scholarly attention. As more and more citizens are turning to social media platforms for civic work, rhetoric and composition must continue to develop methodological approaches that help study these online spaces. In particular, how do researchers ethically gather data from such sites, considering the tendency for users to treat online spaces as private interactions (McKee & Porter, 2009)? How might we use social media not only as sites of study but also as a method for conducting qualitative research? How can we adapt established research methods to better meet the needs of such dynamic spaces? In the following article, I draw on these questions to inform my discussion of research conducted on and through social networks. I argue that a queer methodology enables the kind of flexibility that social media-based research requires. Drawing on previous articulations of queer methodologies and epistemological stances, I trace how my own configuration of a queer methodology shaped my recent study of how people use Facebook and YouTube to make arguments regarding marriage equality. Queer theory’s rich tradition of interrogating the public and the private provided me with the framework for establishing connectivity between my methods, data, and theoretical approach. The resonances between queer theory and digital research practices in terms of publicity and privacy make queer methodologies particularly fruitful for online research. Social media, in particular, presents scenarios where research-related information becomes publicized to multiple sets of audiences. The texts that we study and the spaces in which we recruit participants are now often found online—and sometimes are not served by existing approaches and frameworks. Researchers will continue to use social media as a method for gathering data, and will need methodologies malleable enough to address the dynamism of these platforms. Following in the tradition of Cheri L. Williams (1996) and others, I privilege my reflection on the research process over my study’s findings in this article. As Williams wrestled with issues such as her professional commitment to her project (versus her personal reaction to the behavior she observed), I detail the complications I confronted as I researched social media sites. I specifically address how a queer methodology informed my negotiation of publicity and privacy on these sites, particularly in respect to data collection and researcher ethos. Building on rhetoric and composition’s rich tradition of digital methodologies (Grabill, 2003; McKee & DeVoss, 2007; McKee & Porter, 2009), as well as recent studies that have legitimized sites of research, such as Facebook (Williams, 2009), and YouTube (Dietel-McLaughlin, 2009; Dubisar & Palmeri, 2010), I use my research project as a springboard for conceptualizing emerging methodologies in online spaces. This article offers researchers one possible avenue (among many) for constructing queer methodologies in ways that serve social media research. 1. Constructions of marriage equality on Facebook and YouTube During a year-long study, I traced how marriage equality was being constructed on Facebook and YouTube. Through this study, I sought to learn how citizens were using both of these platforms—which allow for multimodal argumentation, community organizing, and the rapid spread of information—to enter into discourses regarding marriage equality.1 Within the past decade, countless YouTube videos and Facebook posts have addressed the socio-cultural repercussions and rhetorical import of marriage equality. While some of these online texts have been generated by various media outlets, many others are authored by average citizens who desire to express their voices in a public forum. I limited my project to these “grassroots” texts, focusing on YouTube videos and Facebook group pages that engaged with the issue of marriage equality. Because critical/activist research practice advocates for intervention/participation in the site of research (Cushman, 1996; Sullivan & Porter, 1997) I posted comments to the videos and Facebook group pages. My research questions for this project included determining how digital technologies enable or constrain people’s involvement/action in relation to civic issues; discerning people’s goals in using digital media for civic participation; and gaining a better understanding of the rhetorical moves that people have found effective in advancing their cause(s). I interviewed seven Facebook users and six YouTube users, drawing on James Porter’s (2009) theory of digital delivery to analyze their online texts (i.e., Facebook group pages or YouTube videos). Porter’s topoi of body/identity and distribution/circulation proved useful as lenses for thinking about how my participants tried connect with/persuade their

1 While securing the ability to marry is only one facet of a broader cultural and historical movement for LGBTQ rights, I believe it represents a significant moment in the zeitgeist when citizens are using varied rhetorical strategies to oppose or support a civic issue.

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audiences. Through these methods, I sought to contribute to the production of knowledge about LGBTQ individuals by exploring how we are writing/being written by the Internet. Angela Haas (2012) has argued that scholars have become increasingly interested in the intersections between rhetoric, technology, and culture. She has also maintained that, “Technology is not just what does the work, it is the work” (Hass, 2012; p. 291). Thus, it remains important to account for how technologies not only communicate civic and cultural discourses—but more importantly, how technologies construct these discourses. Because technologies are raced, classed, gendered (Selfe & Selfe, 1994; Wysocki, 2003) and sexualized in ways that privilege heteronormativity, I sought to trace how one normative site, marriage, was being constructed on the Internet. While I acknowledge that many queer-identified people have conflicted feelings about marriage—represented in scholarship by Hillery Glasby (2014) (among others) and in queer activist organizations such as Against Equality—the groups that I found on Facebook represented a largely binaristic way of thinking about the issue. The groups that comprised my study offered either a “defense” of marriage against queer people or a desire to broaden who has access to the institution.2 2. Intersections between queer and digital methodological approaches I drew on queer epistemologies for my study because they allowed me to explore messy methodological situations without the expectation of a tidy resolution. I find queer epistemologies especially pertinent when working with social media sites, which remain fluid and sometimes ethically fraught spaces for online research. In describing her methods, Glasby (2014) explained, I want to write in a queer rhetorical space. . . Rather than writing from either the center or the margins, I see myself existing in the narrow space between the columns on the page. Rhetorical modes that exist outside the conventions of dominant academic discourse are vital to demythologizing and dismantling the canon and expanding the representations of lived experience. (“Method,” n.p.) Glasby offered the “rhetoric of negotiation” as a way of working through competing ideas (in her case, the dissonance between her personal and scholarly orientations to marriage equality) without expecting the kind of neat resolution that often dominates academic discourse. Rather, as Glasby’s (2014) approach showed, queer epistemologies honor the tensions, fissures, and gaps that often emerge in our research. Specifically related to my study’s exploration of the concepts of publicity and privacy (detailed later), my use of queer epistemological approaches enabled me to blur methodological lines while still honoring previous research on research methods and social media. Queer methodologies also allow for research designs that challenge traditional models. In Judith Halberstam’s (1998) elucidation of a queer methodology, she advocated for methodological approaches that both respond to various sites of research with flexibility and complicate traditional research methods (p. 10). Halberstam argued that researchers need not be hamstrung by the limits of traditional disciplinary expectations, particularly when researching sites that have not been previously validated by the academy. She conceptualized queer methodology, as a scavenger methodology that uses different methods to collect and produce information on subjects who have been deliberately or accidentally excluded from traditional studies of human behavior. The queer methodology attempts to combine methods that are often cast as being at odds with each other, and it refuses that academic compulsion toward disciplinary coherence. (Halberstam, 1998; p. 13) In this context, then, queer methodology functions both as a commitment to researching sites that have not previously found legitimization, as well as a willingness to draw from a range of disciplinary methods. Likewise, Kath Browne and Catherine Nash (2010) emphasized queer research as a way of challenging frameworks of power, located both in the disciplinary tools available to the researcher, as well as in her chosen topic(s). For Browne and Nash, “‘Queer research’ can be any form of research positioned within conceptual frameworks that highlight the instability of taken-for-granted meanings and resulting power relations” (2010; p. 4). Given this definition, queer research does not limit itself to sexuality; while my study addressed marriage equality, I drew on queer methodological approaches because of this tendency toward instability. We should not view queer as a synonym for LGBT, as Jean Bessette (2013) has argued:

2 Given that several years have elapsed since I conducted this study, it is possible that more nuanced positions on marriage equality might be represented on Facebook in the current day.

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[queer is defined] not as a synonym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender individuals but rather as an orientation against normativity; someone, or something, is queer when s/he or it challenges the social processes that consolidate and normalize gendered, sexual, raced, and classed identities. (p. 28) Building on these sources, in this project I use the term queer to invoke complication: a way to describe how we might trouble the production of knowledge. Beyond adopting queer epistemologies and a queer ethic, I want to be clear about how queerness influenced my methodological approach. One of the most compelling articulations of a queer methodology stems from Browne and Nash’s (2010) distinction between methods and methodology. Uninterested in using queerness simply as a theoretical application or a framework for influencing research methods, they argued that queerness should intersect with “those sets of logical organizing principles that link our ontological and epistemological perspectives with the actual methods we use to gather data” (p. 2). Just as any methodology addresses the relationship between theory, data, and method, queer methodologies help negotiate methods that often do not yield clear-cut results. In my own study, my queer methodology allowed me to feel more comfortable with the messiness of using social media as a method of participant recruitment and data collection. For example, collecting data such as user posts and comments necessitated becoming a member of several groups that espoused homophobic ideas; being transparent as a researcher involved disclosing my sexual orientation to some participants who publicly denounced this aspect of my identity; maintaining a reciprocal relationship with participants meant that my Facebook feed became populated with updates from groups such as “Against Homosexuals Getting Married,” even as I was trying to cultivate a professional Internet presence for the academic job market. I explore these scenarios in detail below, offering my experiences as a queer methodological approach. While he does not specifically draw on queerness in articulating how researchers might challenge traditional research models, John Law (2004) argued for a “way of thinking about method that is broader, looser, more generous, and in certain respects quite different to that of many of the most conventional understandings” (p. 4). In his focus on social science research, he argued for “mess”: an exaggerated expansion of what we think is possible when it comes to our methods for recording data that are always, from a post-structuralist perspective, in flux (which holds particular relevancy to online research). Law’s perspective resonates with the previously-mentioned queer approaches both in its generosity and its rejection of normative standards. He argued that while accepted methods function well in familiar situations, they do not transfer to more unstable scenarios: “If ‘research methods’ are allowed to claim methodological hegemony or (even worse) monopoly. . . then when we are put into relation with such methods we are being placed, however rebelliously, in a set of constraining normative blinkers” (Law, 2004, p. 4). Law called attention to the fact that these normative standards carry with them “contingent and historically-specific Euro-American assumptions,” assumptions that often remain unacknowledged or uninterrogated (5). These methodological concerns about being monopolized by particular research methods reflect queerness, in Bessette’s (2013) sense of rejecting normativity. Law (2004), more explicitly than most researchers, acknowledged the profound unknowability of many phenomena that we attempt to study; in doing so, he proposed that we embrace a more messy approach that does not purport to ensure the inherited Enlightenment-era notions of replicability, reliability, or objectivity. In addition to alternative methodological approaches, this study also benefitted from well-established scholarship in digital methods and methodologies. Queer methodologies, with their flexibility and messiness, resonate with digital researcher Annette Markham’s (2012) description of a remix methodology. In particular, Markham argued that remix, too, resists definitive conclusions: “By letting go of the idea that our academic projects should provide answers, remix provides the researcher with a greater freedom to build creative and compelling arguments that enter larger conversations, both inside and outside the Academy” (p. 8). For Markham (2012), this kind of methodology stems from remix’s association with collage, mash-up, and pastiche: a blending of sometimes dissonant perspectives, methods, and resources to yield an approach that speaks to the needs of a particular study. A remix methodology also highly values reflection, acknowledging that there are multiple ways of approaching any one methodological question. Rather than positioning this kind of retrospection as it might be traditionally viewed—insecurity about one’s approach—Markham encouraged researchers to value what she terms “interrogation.” She argued, This constant questioning may not be directly acknowledged as part of one’s method, but it comprises a powerful everyday practice of all inquiry. Noticing it allows us to get better at doing it well, with purpose, and to incorporate the processes and products of our interrogations more clearly, or rigorously. (2012, pp. 13–14)

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Markham’s contribution spoke to the instability of digital research: texts constantly evolve; participants expect privacy in publicly available sites; and a robust underlife often eludes researchers. Rather than approaching these challenges with trepidation, Markham encouraged researchers to rethink and revaluate their choices in the spirit of rigorous inquiry. The instability of online research has led some online researchers to advocate for a case-based approach to Internet research ethics. Just as “remix is a generative tool for thinking creatively about methods” (Markham, 2012; p. 3), Heidi McKee and James Porter (2009) offered researchers a set of heuristics, rather than rules, to guide their decisionmaking. Seeking to disrupt a totalizing perspective of all online activity as public, McKee and Porter constructed several continua that researchers might utilize in thinking through the ethics of online research. Most pertinent to my project, their continuum of “public” and “private” acknowledged that despite the public nature of the Internet, people sometimes perceive their online interactions as being private. The authors posed the question, “Given that people writing online have these expectations of privacy, but their writings are not actually private, should a researcher then respect that expectation of privacy even if it is illusory?” (2009, p. 249). Ultimately, McKee and Porter advocated for a careful and intensive study of the research site to determine whether informed consent is needed. Additionally, they offered other continua such as “subject vulnerability” and “topic sensitivity”—the latter of which weighed heavily on my study, as sexuality represented an ever-present undercurrent in the discussions about marriage equality that I studied. Serving as a means of encouraging researchers to map multiple factors of a research study, McKee and Porter’s (2009) continua reflected the contingent nature of online research and stressed the need for situated approaches to ethical decisions. McKee and Porter’s recommendations echo the Association of Internet Researchers’ (of which they are contributing members) suggestion that researchers adopt a case-based approach to online research ethics. The Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) have argued that this kind of approach responds to the fact that “Individual and cultural definitions and expectations of privacy are ambiguous, contested, and changing. People may operate in public spaces but maintain strong perceptions or expectations of privacy” (2009, p. 11). Because the perception of privacy remains something to which researchers must become attuned, highlighting the need for researchers to become familiar with the nuances of each potential site of study remains critical. The fluidity of the research process when it comes to online locations in many ways mirrors the malleability and instability of a queer epistemology. In fact, in their 2007 collection, Queer Online, O’Riordan and Phillips claimed, “The cybersubject, assumed as a fluid performative freed from embodied constraints. . . intersects with the ideal queer subject” (p. 26). Both online subjectivities and queer subjectivities have often been portrayed as mutable: a characteristic that allows for strategic ambiguity. In this sense, online environments and queer epistemologies highlight the contingent nature of not only identity but also communication. Researching such environments, then, requires the flexibility and rhetorical savvy that the AoIR describe. Scholars have positioned queer and digital methodologies as being flexible to the needs of researchers who wish to blur boundaries and explore unstable research sites such as social media. When it comes to the public/private continuum, queer theory and digital scholarship interanimate each other. This continuum stands at the intellectual core of both queer theory and digital methodological research, as each area of inquiry has sought to grapple with the political, ideological, and pragmatic repercussions of what we mean by these fluid terms. Many of the methodological quandaries I faced during my study relate in some way to the public/private continuum; for that reason, I include some background on how scholars have theorized publicity and privacy, and I provide an overview of how the continuum informed my study and research process. 3. Queering the private/public binary The multiple disciplines that research and theorize computers and writing have considered the terms “public” and “private” as they relate to our ability to collect data from online environments. Anthropologist Patricia Lange (2008) complicated the private/public binary by coining the phrases “privately public” and “publicly private”: the former implying the sharing of information online with tight privacy controls, and the latter implying the sharing of intimate details to broad online audiences. Lange’s work illustrates how online environments have caused fissures in these terms. Similarly, Danah Boyd and Alice Marwick (2011) emphasized that the meaning of privacy and publicity have shifted along with sociocultural developments and technological change. They argued, “As social constructs, privacy and publicity are affected by what is structurally feasible and socially appropriate. In recent history, privacy was often taken for granted because structural conditions made it easier to not share than to share. Social media has changed the equation” (p. 10). In today’s social media environment of increased sharing, the one-time default of private-by-default,

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public-by-effort has become inverted (Boyd & Marwick, 2011, pp. 10–11). Considering that it now takes effort to keep information private—whereas it once took considerable effort to publicize information—privacy and publicity have changed, not merely blurred. Steve Mann, Jason Nolan, and Barry Wellman (2003) detailed some of the ways in which privacy has changed by proposing the concept of sousveillance, or “inverse surveillance.” Whereas surveillance functions as a top-down measure imposed on people as a means of social control, sousveillance occurs from the ground up: citizens watching and documenting institutional representatives via widely available technologies. Mann et al. (2003), pinpointed the strategy implicit in this approach: “Acts of sousveillance redirect an establishment’s mechanisms and technologies of surveillance back on the establishment” (p. 17). Privacy no longer remains confined to the liberal notion of a non-public self; even people/institutions that engage in some form of monitoring also find themselves being monitored. On a small scale, when we participate in social media, even though we employ some degree of privacy controls, we open ourselves up to surveillance by both human and non-human entities that want to sell us something or extract information from us. At the same time, reading the details of other people’s lives stands as one of the appeals of social media in the first place. This tension surfaced acutely in my study when I closely monitored what people were saying in particular Facebook groups, and simultaneously felt uncomfortable when some of my Facebook friends were watching (and questioning) my research activity on the platform. Experiences on social media such as this one illustrate how many of our online actions might be classified as privately public or publicly private: some degree of publicity is often at play, and multiple levels of surveillance co-occur. While recent technologies have complicated traditional notions of public and private, queer theorists have spent the last two decades interrogating these terms at length. Building on feminism’s epistemological stance of “the personal is political,” scholars such as Judith Butler (1997) argued that the distinction between the personal and the political is a fiction designed to benefit hegemonic entities. In a similar vein, Michael Warner (2002) explored how power dynamics inform supposedly “private” matters such as sexualities, domestic lives, gender performance, and intimacy. He located the existence of these power dynamics in the private sphere as one reason why LGBTQ movements have often embraced public spheres as sites of political agitation: In some ways, [queer political culture]—and more generally the practices associated with them—have carried implicitly an enormous faith in the public sphere. They have believed that political struggles were to be carried out neither through the normal state apparatus nor through revolutionary combat but through the non-state media in which public opinion is invested with the ability to dissolve power. (Warner, 2002, p. 210) Applying this theory to Internet-based communication, the ability for groups and individuals to engage in read/write culture (Lessig, 2008) with a potentially world-wide audience opens up the possibility for authors to actively challenge normative constructions of gender and sexual orientation. Halberstam (2012) has argued for the necessity of reimagining our notions of publicity and privacy; political efficacy depends in part on understanding how these concepts function in the modern day: As we go from analog to digital, from local to global, from proximity to virtuality, from community to social network, how is it that we can shift and alter our perceptions of so many of the building blocks of social life but we still cling to practically nineteenth-century notions of the intimate, the domestic, and the private? (p.16) The circulation of discourses about queer lives requires knowing how to marshal effective present day means of achieving publicity. While some scholars have attempted to complicate the public/private binary, Tom Boellstorff (2010) advocated that we “surf binarisms,” a tactic that I have found helpful in negotiating privacy and publicity online. Boellstorff argued that we can never fully escape binaries’ structuring influence, and “claims of transcending them typically turn out to be exercises in obfuscation” (p. 222). Instead, he envisioned surfing as way of mitigating between determinism and freedom (a binary in itself). For Boellstorff, “To surf is to move freely upon a wave that constrains choice (you cannot make it move in the opposite direction), but does not wholly determine one’s destination” (2010, p. 223). While binaries constrain our ways of talking about, for example, the notion of privacy, we can nevertheless expand the discussion beyond existing categories. The constraints of binaries often leave us with inadequate options for engaging in the kind of research practices that we believe best serves our projects—especially when we use social media platforms. Rather than feeling as though we have a fixed set of options when it comes to our participants’ privacy, we can instead surf the private/public binary and seek to expand our understandings of what privacy means in social media spaces. As I describe in more detail in later sections, I sometimes adopted a transparent stance about my orientation during this

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research while at other times, I chose not to disclose my orientation. In doing so, I surfed the binary of out/closeted in order to more effectively engage with my participants and gather the data that I needed. Boellstorff’s (2010) approach to binaries enabled more politically nimble research methodologies that can better describe the kind of citizen activisms that have emerged online. In addition to emphasizing the rhetorical nature of research practices, Boellstorff’s (2010) concept also encouraged us to not be politically stagnant as researchers. While scholars have previously addressed the intersections between literacy practices and sexuality (Malinowitz, 1995; Blackburn, 2003) and the effects of technology on those practices (Alexander & Banks, 2004; Barrios, 2004; Pullen & Cooper, 2010), my study examined the unique intersections of public and private via a queer methodology for social media research. This kind of research often requires that researcher be prepared to negotiate the evolving notions of public and private in relation to her own subject position. Additionally, a queer methodology is sensitive to moments when attention from a researcher might bring unwanted publicity to a participant/cause (Banks & Eble, 2009); it also acknowledges the benefits of publicity, particularly when conducting civic-based research, and seeks to harness those benefits in rhetorically savvy ways. Using a queer methodological lens involves surfing the false public/private binary when engaging in research of digital spaces. I will sketch out some of the ways in which I relied on this framework as I explore two methodological issues familiar to all researchers: participant recruitment and researcher ethos.3 4. Constructing a researcher ethos In addition to rhetorically analyzing videos and Facebook groups, I also sought to interview the creators of these documents.4 While tracking down and contacting creators proved relatively easy, my initial interactions with prospective participants surfaced questions about method. Feminist researchers have long emphasized the importance of transparency when it comes to explaining the researcher’s stance to participants (Addison & McGee, 1999; Kirsch, 1999; McKee & Porter, 2009; Sullivan & Kirsch, 1992). Though my purpose for the study involved an interest in how my participants were using digital technologies to engage a civic issue, the particular issue that they had written about, marriage equality, held personal resonance for me.5 I felt that not being clear about my positionality would place my participants in a difficult position when they read a draft of the completed study. Mathias Detamore (2010) argued that using queer ethics as a method involves establishing a more intimate relationship with participants (p. 174). While I did not share with my stance on marriage equality with my participants, I drew on a queer ethic to divulge my sexual orientation. Due to the nature of the study (i.e., I only corresponded with my participants via email), I believed that disclosing my sexual orientation might be the primary gesture I could make toward establishing intimacy with them. At the same time, I worried that doing so would alienate those potential participants who opposed marriage equality—a significant problem because I wanted my project to reflect a variety of perspectives. With the interconnectedness of theory, data, and method, this scenario illustrates how my queer methodology influenced even the earliest stages of the study. Informed by a queer ethic of intimacy, I ultimately decided on a method of transparency when recruiting participants; as a result, however, my decision to “out” myself to my participants effectively undercut one of the goals for my research. During participant recruitment, I corresponded with a number of interested people who were not supportive of marriage equality. Once I was transparent with them about my sexuality, I heard from only one of them again. In addition, I received two responses that warned me of the moral consequences of my “aberrant” behavior. My decision to be transparent with my participants in this regard essentially cost me the ability to achieve my goal of representing a variety of opinions on marriage equality. I make this point to emphasize that a queer methodological stance will often not yield convenient results. In Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes’s 2012 Technoculture video entitled Queered, they emphasized the complicated ways in which the concept of ethos bears upon queerness by asking, “What kind of ethos is the queer allowed?”; “Who has the right to speak, and on 3 While I believe that a queer methodological framework can influence more methodological considerations than researcher ethos and participant recruitment, I am limited by space to discuss further applications. 4 This study was approved by the Miami University IRB. 5 While my study did not focus on gender inequality per se, it did employ a feminist methodology in its attempt to confront a patriarchal institution through research. The institution of marriage has created and/or perpetuated multiple inequalities that limit citizens’ abilities to lead just and productive lives. Feminist methodology provided me with the foundation to address these inequalities and view them as contingent realities that can be changed.

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what and with what credibility?” (“Ethos,” n.p.). Applying these questions to my situation, did I have the “right to speak” about my sexual orientation in a research recruitment document? Did doing so violate generic expectations and compromise my credibility? While these questions remained in my mind throughout the process, I nevertheless believed it important for my participants to know the stake I held in decisions about marriage equality. Although some might view a declaration of sexual orientation out of place in a participant recruitment letter, I sought to assert my ethos as someone personally implicated by my participants’ online postings. The approach that I decided to take also had repercussions for me personally. While having to make difficult methodological decisions is a familiar scenario for researchers, the danger involved in this case is representative of a particular constraint for queer researchers conducting queer-themed research. Especially when interacting with vocal opponents of queer rights, we face legitimate harm by opening ourselves to various forms of harassment. Any researcher who occupies a marginalized identity position—in terms of race, class, ability, gender, or sexuality—can easily find herself in a similar scenario. In these moments, a queer methodology can help weigh all the factors involved and arrive at a decision that demonstrates a commitment to advocating for social justice while also showing care for our participants and ourselves. Such a methodology recognizes that the boundaries between safety and danger are not clear cut, and that acknowledging the fluidity of identity can help us navigate these boundaries in rhetorically savvy ways. In other words, transparency can look very different at various stages of research. While being up-front about aspects of one’s life can enrich a project and benefit the researcher-participant relationship, other moments within the same study may require a more reserved approach. Implementing both strategies does not signal inconsistency but rather a kairotic sensitivity. The case-based framework that the Association of Internet Researchers (2012) advocated supports such an approach: “Rather than one-size-fits-all pronouncements, ethical decision-making is best approached through the application of practical judgment attentive to the specific context (what Aristotle identified as phronesis)” (p. 4). Transparency does not represent a de facto principle for dictating the researcher/participant relationship; rather, it depends (in part) on a complex set of dynamics between the individuals involved. Queer methodologies recognize that while a variety of approaches might be ethically and practically valid, the decision about how to negotiate issues such as a researcher’s transparency with participants about her own subject position is highly contextualized and personal. 5. Participant recruitment: Joining groups and collecting data While the previous example illustrates a research method that involved a measure of publicity—being transparent with participants about an intimate aspect of my life—at other junctures of the study, I adopted a less public approach. When it came to interacting with potential participants via Facebook, I became guarded about the digital trails left by my research activities. A bit of background on the website’s structure (which has since changed) is needed before I explore its implications for my privacy as a researcher. During the course of my study, Facebook was comprised of individual pages, group pages, and fan pages, each with its own purposes and affordances. I primarily focused on group pages: areas where people, once they joined the group, could interact by posting messages on the group’s wall or by using the discussion board feature. While some groups were labeled “open”—meaning that anyone could join the group and be granted immediate access—others required that the user send a request to the group administrator. In the latter case, I was often allowed access without further communication between the administrator and me. Although I had previously been a member of only a handful of Facebook groups relating to marriage equality prior to beginning this study, I believed that I still carried some ethos with my potential participants as someone whose Facebook page showed that I was already invested in this topic and social networking in general. I found relevant groups by performing a search for terms such as “gay marriage,” “antigay marriage,” “marriage equality,” and “prop 8.” I gained access to groups representing a variety of perspectives on marriage equality, participated in the group discussion for a period of time, and then contacted the group administrator to inquire about whether s/he would like to participate in the study. While scholars have emphasized the importance of developing a relationship with the communities we research (Cintron, 1997; Cushman, 1996; Moss, 1992), working with multiple and varied online communities/individuals can make it difficult to establish meaningful ties with potential participants. While many of the groups I joined supported marriage equality, I joined several others that did not, in the hope of being able to interview people who opposed marriage equality and have their perspectives represented in my study. When it came time to actually click the “join” button, however, I hesitated. I realized that I would boost their membership numbers, helping them to achieve some degree of cache within the Facebook community. More troubling, my name would be attached to these groups. Even

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with the option of tightening my privacy controls, I was uneasy that one of my Facebook friends (who numbered between 200 and 400 during the course of the study) would discover that I became a member of groups that were espousing homophobic ideals. While my close friends were aware of the nature of my research, I was Facebook friends with many other people, including scholars in rhetoric and composition, who did not know about my research project; I wondered if my reputation might be adversely affected by becoming a member of these groups. Furthermore, I was going on the job market the following year; I worried that this project might jeopardize the professional online presence that I had worked hard to establish. In essence, I did not want my name associated with groups such as “1,000,000 in support of Proposition 8,” “Protect Traditional Marriage,” and “ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE ESPECIALLY GAYS RAISING CHILDREN.” My options for how to access information on Facebook surfaced questions about the repercussions of using social media as a method. In this instance, social media proved more than just a site of research; it also served as an instrument for obtaining data. This method resulted in an unintended consequence: information about my research activity circulating more broadly than made me comfortable. While my participants sought out Facebook as a means of publicizing their opinions, I felt overly implicated in their discussions when I joined groups that espoused homophobic sentiments. Sarah Ahmed’s work on orientation toward objects proved useful here in thinking through researchers’ relationships to technology and social media in particular. Ahmed argued that what makes a thing itself, as opposed to something else, is defined by the actions it enables us to do (p. 45). Building on Heidegger, she claimed that technology is the process of “bringing forth” (p. 46). From my perspective, social media allowed the bringing forth of valuable data for my study; at the same time, it allowed other people not involved in the study to view aspects of my research method. While both my participants and I joined the Facebook groups to access the information in them, we did so for different purposes; we possessed different orientations to social media. As a researcher, I wanted to join Facebook groups without that fact having been shared with my Facebook friends. My participants, however, likely felt satisfaction in having their groups (and thus their opinion about marriage equality) broadcast to their Facebook friends. Because using social media as a method requires flexibility on the part of the researcher, a queer methodology is well-suited to research of this nature. Returning to Glasby’s (2014) “rhetoric of negotiation,” my experience required that I negotiate my own relationship to publicity during the course of the study. Whereas in a different aspect of the study I opted for a more public stance (disclosing my orientation to my participants), in this set of circumstances, I shied away from it. A consistent public/transparent approach would have dictated that I used my own Facebook page, allowing my participants to discern a fuller picture of my politics and identity. Realizing the personal and potentially professional repercussions of such a move, however, I sought to exert control over how my page was being positioned among the wider Facebook community. The methodology that I claimed, then, allowed for residing along various points on the public/private continuum as a researcher. Queering the methodological notion of transparency allowed me to be “public” in one scenario and to privilege a more private approach in another—and to negotiate the seeming inconsistency by embracing the fissures that emerged in my method. In my decision about how to access information on Facebook, I found my personal life conflicting with my research obligations. Ultimately, I decided to create a second account under my own name, upload a picture without my likeness,6 and “friend,” only those people who were aware of my research agenda. I also joined groups that represented a variety of perspectives on marriage equality so it would be apparent to potential participants that I was maintaining a research Facebook page. These choices left me uneasy throughout the course of the study, particularly in knowing that I increased the membership numbers of groups who spread homophobic sentiments. During the study, I only maintained about 20 friends on this research Facebook page, limiting it to people who had an intimate knowledge of my research.7 Researching a site such as Facebook, which is not a frequent focus of academia, resonated with Halberstam’s (2011) advice to not become hamstrung by the limits of “traditional” research. Through a queer methodology, I attempted to harness the tensions I felt as a result of using a social media method, ultimately viewing the above complications as opportunities to work toward new understandings about digital research.

6 In retrospect, not including a picture of myself on this Facebook account may have adversely affected my ability to recruit participants. People may have been more likely to respond to me had they seen a face to go along with my name. 7 This decision in itself presented a problem. My page did not garner much use—most notably, people rarely wrote on my wall—and it may have not looked “legitimate” in the eyes of potential participants as they were deciding whether or not to respond to my inquiries. I would have likely gained more participants for my study if I had been more effective in legitimizing this page.

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6. Resistance to strict definitions: Queerness as techne Queer methodologies encourage us to reconsider and, when needed, disrupt previous research practices. Developing a queer methodology allowed me to adapt the feminist notion of transparency—as well as queer my researcher ethos and my participant recruitment—in a way that spoke to its specific circumstances. Just as queerness embraces messiness and complication, my methodological approach allowed for researcher transparency at one stage of the study and a more private approach during another stage. While I opted for transparency when it came to being up-front about my orientation with my participants, I became more protective of my identity when I became associated with various Facebook groups. Following Boellstorff’s (2010) model of “surfed binarisms,” I did not allow my methodological choices to become constrained by the traditional public/private binary. In this sense, queerness does not mean being either transparent or not with participants; what is queer is allowing for a broad range of possibilities when it comes to interacting with participants and data. Being able to adjust one’s approach throughout the course of a study, depending on the context, is a valuable tool at a researcher’s disposal. As O’Riordan has argued, “It is in providing strategies for keeping the tensions and spaces required for dialectical intersections open, that one of the important aspects of queer lies” (2007; p. 27). A connection between queer theory, methods, and data allows the researcher to productively explore the tensions and fissures that emerge in the research process—and even use those complications as the focus of future research opportunities. With all the opportunities for “dialectical intersections” on social media, we need to develop research approaches that mirror these platforms by resisting norms, blurring lines, and embracing the messiness of research. For further guidance in how to craft such an approach, I want to return to Law’s (2004) notion of messy research, in which he suggested a “re-ordering” of what methods might look like from an alternative perspective. While acknowledging that offering clear-cut suggestions for new methods would undercut the desire for subversion, Law instead asked what kind of issues we as researchers might debate. The nine issues that he suggests form a kind of heuristic for disrupting traditional approaches to research. Among these nine issues, two stand out as being particularly relevant to this project. In his discussion of symmetry, Law argued,“if we want to understand our methods then we need to treat them symmetrically, to explore them without, in the first instance, judging their adequacy in terms of our prior assumptions about what is methodologically right and what does not pass muster” (2004; p. 152). This position calls for a deviation from norms, an exploration of what might be possible with a different approach. While our academic training ensures that we are aware of methodological norms—and those norms are enforced in our journals, graduate programs, and conferences—pushing ourselves to look outside of those norms might yield compelling data not otherwise achievable. In my own project, I knew that feminist traditions espoused researcher transparency, but I felt constrained in being consistently transparent when it came to my subject position. This tension surfaced as a result of my utilizing social media as a method of data collection, an approach that has not yet found extensive attention within the academy. Social media as a method presents researchers with complications—including the fluidity of user identity, which applies to researchers as well—that requires flexible thinking on the part of the researcher. One of Law’s other issues for debate, materialities, calls attention to the need for honoring myriad and diverse research spaces. Law asked, Should materials other than those that are currently privileged be recognized as presences that reflect and help to enact reality? Should we move beyond academic texts to texts in other modalities?. . .I have responded by saying yes to all these questions and have argued that the realities we know—and help to enact—in academic texts, though important, are much too restricted. (2004; p. 154) Law’s call for increased attention to “other” modalities and realities can be seen as encompassing social media sites. In using platforms such as Facebook and YouTube in my research, I sought to validate these sites as locations of meaningful discursive exchange—indeed, as realities that structure how people try to make sense of their lives. Researchers interested in queering traditional methods might use Law’s (2004) nine issues for debate as a heuristic for thinking through the ways in which we might engage in more expansive research. As queer methodologies continue to be developed and applied in a broad range of research contexts, researchers must refrain from offering limiting definitions about what such methodologies look like or do, as Law (2004) claimed with his own notion of “messy” research. Just like messiness, queerness rejects categorization and stability. As Browne and Nash explained, “Keeping queer permanently unclear, unstable and ‘unfit’ to represent any particular sexual identity is the key to maintaining a non-normative queer position. This is not a simple task in an academy that increasingly

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embraces ‘queer’ contingencies while simultaneously requiring specific rules of rigor, clarity and truthfulness” (2010; p. 8). Rhetoric and composition as a field has wrestled with its methodological diversity, sometimes seeking out categorization and classification as a way of demonstrating rigor and clarity in our research (e.g. North’s (1987) The Making of Knowledge in Composition). Because queerness flies in the face of clarity, reconciling it with methodological rigor might seem contradictory. In response, I turn to Boellstorff’s (2010) question about what queer studies would look like if it were less concerned with producing episteme than with techne. To Boellstorff’s mind, “Construing knowledge as the endpoint of queer studies limits conceptualizations of both queer method and the scope of that method” (p. 229). When applied to the notion of queer methodologies, techne offers the possibility of troubling normative attitudes toward research rather than setting out a fixed set of characteristics that define such a methodology. Susan Delagrange (2013) compellingly wrote about the value of techne as a contingent art that disrupts—or, to use Boellerstorff’s (2010) term, “surfs”—the theory/practice binary. According to Delagrange, “The knowledge of techne is contingent, created in the moment of making, and as such is a heuristic process of discovery. Techne is also not a static quality or power, and therefore cannot “belong” to a normative subject (2013; p. 36). This explanation elucidates not only techne’s malleability—well-suited to social media research—but also its inherent resistance to normative constructions. While Delagrange’s (2013) work focused on feminist concerns, she made clear that techne is an asset to traditionally marginalized subjectivities. Boellstorff’s (2010) suggestion that queer studies might focus on producing techne aligns with a queer methodology that seeks to disrupt normative research practices as well as normative associations between technology and sexuality. So what might it look like for queerness to function as techne? While techne requires knowledge of both “theoretical understanding and practical know-how” (Porter, 2009, p. 210), we should not focus on knowledge as the goal of a queer methodology; rather, viewing queerness as techne helps us to reorient toward the process of adaptation, the flexibility of method, the need to constantly change our approaches. Such a perspective is deeply rhetorical, and remains consistent with Porter’s claim that “[Rhetoric as techne] becomes degraded when it is taught or practiced as a set of mechanical procedures, rules or formulas to be followed or patterns to be copied” (2009; p. 210). Similarly, queerness as techne emphasizes process—the process of adapting previous approaches. When we attempt to use the same methods to address specific new research scenarios—because we have been taught that these are the “accepted” methods in our field—queer methodologies become degraded. This article, in fact, stands as an attempt to focus on techne rather than episteme: rather than highlight the findings of my study, I instead detail my process in conducting that study, and how I had to adapt some of the standard research practices that our field espouses. While my study did not produce the corpus of knowledge about online civic participation that I had hoped for, I realized that its value lay in how it caused me to re-see the process of conducting research in social media environments. Queer methodologies should acknowledge that while research questions might not be answered, or that anticipated directions may need to be re-routed, significant value exists in those deviations. Finally, I want to (re)frame my initial questions that began this piece with Halberstam’s (2011) notion of the queer art of failure, exploring how failure might offer one option for navigating binaries. While Boellstorff (2010) envisioned a process of “surfing” binaries, we should consider Halberstam’s conception of failure as way to productively float where we fall—if surfing does not pan out. In her articulation of the queer art of failure, Halberstam argued for the importance of resisting mastery: This resistance takes the form of investing in counterintuitive modes of knowing such as failure and stupidity; we might read failure, for example, a refusal of mastery. . . Stupidity could refer not simply to a lack of knowledge but to the limits of certain forms of knowing and certain ways of inhabiting structures of knowing. (2011; p. 12) For Halberstam, failure does not comprise lack, but rather an alternative—a refusal to adhere to narrow notions of “success.” In an age of privacy as perception, my first question about how we ethically gather data from social media means consistently reevaluating our continuum of privacy and publicity. In my own study, my assumption about what constituted public postings in “open” Facebook groups was challenged on several occasions by group members and administrators who said they considered their groups public, but not public “enough” to warrant the intrusions of a researcher. While the terms “privately public” and “publicly private” remain useful, they imply static categories that might not materialize in a given study. Halberstam’s (2011) embracing of messiness and disorder offers a queer ethic that honors flexibility when researching “private” texts online. Additionally, using social media as a method for conducting qualitative research illustrates counterhegemonic ways of knowing. Viewing social media as a valid method of data collection might entail, as it did with my study, our research processes being publicized in unexpected ways.

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Conducting research via Facebook meant that my research activity gained broader audiences than I intended. Using a lens of failure, we can see these disruptions as instances of nonlinearity: that research does not necessarily progress through sequential stages of (private) data collection and analysis and then on to a (public) presentation of the findings when the researcher is ready. Refusing this linear progression is one way that we might adapt established research methods to better meet the needs of dynamic online spaces. As I have detailed here, digital writing scholars have developed compelling methods for researching digital environments. Queer methodologies can remind us that those methods will sometimes require disruption. With their acceptance of alternate ways of being, queer methodologies can mobilize non-normative research practices, sites of research, and methods of communication in order to meet the demands of complex online rhetorical situations. Caroline Dadas is an Assistant Professor at Montclair State University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in digital rhetorics, methodology, professional writing, political discourse and technology, and queer rhetorics. Her research focuses on methodologies for studying online spaces, the use of digital media in civic-based action, and depictions of LGBT individuals online.

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