2017 chapter
Chapter 8. Visualizing Boutique Data in Egocentric Networks
In Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies (pp. 145–160).
We do more than write in social media platforms. We “Like” posts and pictures.1 We share and move information along by tapping “Share” or “Retweet.” Each of these actions has meaning, so sometimes we hedge in our profiles, writing things like, “Retweets are not endorsements,” or making sure our networks are not too close, saying things like, “Views represented here are only my own,” in an effort to avoid confusion over responsibility. Our bodies move across interfaces, frequently through tapping/clicking; this movement shows, if not our approval, certainly our attention as we push content along or announce to others and ourselves that what we are liking or reposting is important and worth paying attention to. The scale of such activity can be daunting. We care about our own networks and the activity in those networks more than larger trends.2 As Mark Zuckerberg once famously said, “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa” (as cited in Pariser, 2011). And we care about our networks because of relevance. Our networks are the way we stay in touch with friends and, increasingly, they are the way we get our jobs done. This chapter focuses on visualizing the social networks around individuals, or “egocentric” networks, as well as producing a way to measure and visualize the embodied rhetorical production of egocentric network behavior. I began this project as a way for people to understand and visualize rhetorical activity in their own networks. This chapter takes as a starting point that social media networks and platforms record rhetorical behavior beyond linguistic production. Emerging from a larger project about culture and professionalism, my goal