04 Shaping Discourse Through Social Media Using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to Explore the Narratives That Influence Educational Policy PDF

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doi/10.1177/American Behavioral Scientist 2019, Vol. 63(3) 333 – © 2019 SAGE Publications Article reuse guidelines: sagepub/journals-permissions DOI: 10/ journals.sagepub/home/absArticleShaping DiscourseThrough Social Media:Using FoucauldianDiscourse Analysis toExplore the Narratives ThatInfluence E...

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Shaping Discourse Through Social Media: Using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to Explore the Narratives That Influence Educational Policy

American Behavioral Scientist 2019, Vol. 63(3) 333–350 © 2019 SAGE Publications Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0002764218820565 journals.sagepub.com/home/abs

Cecile H. Sam1

Abstract This article offers Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) as an innovative qualitative methodology to apply to the intersection of social media and public policy research. The article has two sections. The first section briefly defines FDA and discourse and situates the methodology in the educational policy research literature. The second section applies FDA to a narrative about the Common Core State Standards as it occurred on Twitter, with an explanation of key terms throughout the process. Keywords Foucauldian discourse analysis, public policy, Common Core, narratives

With the acceptance that technology and social media are inextricably woven into our experience, we shift from postmodernism into a new era of Digimodernism (Kirby, 2006). Digimodernism is characterized by the interactive relationship people have with communication technology (Kirby, 2009). It builds off the tenets of postmodernism but amplifies the role that technology and media has in our experience. In this age, we are simultaneously authors, consumers, and gatekeepers of information (Kirby, 2009; van Dijck, 2009). In terms of the public policy process, the Digimodern age gives rise to the power of the individual narrative. These narratives can carry more weight in shaping policy than the information that empirical research provides. For 1Rowan

University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author: Cecile H. Sam, Rowan University, 201 Mullica Hill Road, Glassboro, NJ 08028, USA. Email: [email protected]

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example, “fake news” shared on social media sites influenced the decisions of many people, and evidence to the contrary failed to disrupt their commitment to the false narrative (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). Stories are how people interpret, understand, express, and share experiences (Baumeister & Newman, 1994). Stories are powerful. They shape our expectations of the world. Some people see them as a part of a broader, objective metanarrative—a unifying grand narrative that connects events to make sense of history and society (Lyotard, 1979). However, others view the metanarrative as subjective, fractured, and contradictory (Foucault, 1972; Lyotard, 1979). In line with Digimodernism, it is comprised of localized stories competing to be most “true” by being the most compelling and most shared. The only “grand narratives” that exist are the ones that people create, and those with power can use them as a means to control others (Foucault, 1972; Lyotard, 1979). In terms of education research, capturing the discourses that inform people’s understanding of a policy provides a unique perspective on the policy process: the underlying narratives that motivate people to action. Motivating people to action is often a key component of the process from formation to implementation (Fowler, 2000; Sabatier & Weible, 2014). Education policies that lack stakeholder support may never get past the agenda stage. Even after implementation, public resistance may cause policy to be revised or reversed (Fowler, 2000). How can we capture these localized narratives that influence public opinion on educational policy? One way is through Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA). FDA illuminates how power and knowledge shape our understanding of the world through language. Because inherently it is a historical analysis (Kendall & Wickham, 1999), FDA is particularly useful when exploring how narratives unfold via social media. This article offers FDA as an innovative qualitative methodology to apply to the intersection of social media and public policy research. The article has two sections. The first section briefly defines FDA and discourse and situates the methodology in the educational policy research literature. The second section applies FDA to a narrative about the Common Core (CC) State Standards as it occurred on Twitter, with an explanation of key terms throughout the process. This article is not intended to be a strict prescriptive “how-to” on applying FDA, but rather as a guide to help researchers develop their own studies.

What Is FDA? FDA is a field of analysis that builds much of its foundation from the writings and ideas of Michel Foucault. Though it is eponymous of the French postmodernist philosopher, the methodology also draws from poststructuralists such as Barthes, Lyotard, and Derrida (Graham, 2011; Wooffitt, 2005). FDA could be considered one of the “postqualitative” methodologies falling into the postmodern poststructuralism category (St. Pierre, 2011), which entails ontological and epistemological assumptions that will be addressed later in this article.

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Compared with the “bottom-up” approaches of discourse analysis that focus on linguistic structure and language practice (e.g., grammatical structures or syntax), FDA takes a “top-down” perspective focusing on broader political, ideological, or historical issues as they relate to power and knowledge through discourse (Mayo, 2000; Wooffitt, 2005). It describes the narratives that shape our understanding of the world. This “top-down” perspective makes FDA inherently political in orientation—A methodology that begins with defining a problem (Kendall & Wickham, 1999), and is designed to critique and question the legitimacy of established assumptions, structures, and social dynamics related to that problem (Wooffitt, 2005).

What Is Discourse? Parker (1989) defines discourse as a “system of statements which construct an object” (p. 61). These systems include language, ideas, symbols, and ideology. They also include attitudes, terms of address, and courses of action (Holstein & Gubrium, 2005; LeGreco, 2017). Though the definition on its surface is straightforward, Foucauldian conceptualizations of discourse set themselves apart from other traditions of discourse analysis in several ways. First, Foucault (1972) defines discourse as that which was “already-said,” and he widens the definition further to include what is “never-said” and “not-said” (p. 43). For everything that has already been written and spoken, there is at the same time a silent discourse of potentials that never manifested for various reasons. The discourse that we experience is the result of some potentials becoming actualities. Second, Foucauldian discourse is a “social practice” (Garrity, 2010) and subsequently it is situated among the collective rather than the individual (Diaz-Bone et al., 2008). FDA examines discourse on a macro-level as it takes place in a social sphere, and it shapes the behavior of people in social interactions (Burman et al., 2007; Diaz-Bone et al., 2008). This does not mean that discourse is insignificant at the individual level. On the contrary, discourse is how individuals relate to society and themselves. Third, Foucault shifts the idea of agency away from the individual and instead establishes that it is discourse that has agency (Caldwell, 2007; Wooffitt, 2005). Discourse is framed as being autonomous and independent from human agency. It has agency through the construction of objects; discourse gives words their meaning by establishing the rules of what can or cannot be said. Fourth, Foucault defines discourse by what it is not. Oftentimes “discourse” is used interchangeably with “language” and usually the substitution is appropriate (Garrity, 2010). However, discourse encapsulates more than that. Foucault (1972) states that discourse is not the “intersection of things and words” (p. 48) nor is it the tension between “a reality and a language’s own words.” It is also “more than” signs used to “designate things,” and though it includes language and speech, discourse is not limited to them. Rather, discourse is a set of inconsistencies and contradictions as

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competing values and ideas. Language is just one way these competing ideas shape everyday practice (Jacobs, 2006). In addition to focusing on what discourse is, it may serve better to include what discourse does (Bové, 1995). Discourse is what privileges one type of knowledge over another and can be replicated and propagated through our systems of communication. The aim of discourse “is to describe the surface linkages between power, knowledge, institutions, intellectuals, the control of populations, and the modern state as these intersect in the functions of systems of thought” (Bové, 1995, pp. 54-55). It gives legitimacy to some ideas and not others.

Why Use FDA in a Digimodern World? FDA in Education Policy Research Foucault and his ideas are no strangers to education research. A large body of social science research uses critical, gender, or queer theories that are heavily influenced by Foucault’s works (Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998). Even other language-based approaches such as critical discourse theory reference Foucault’s works (Lester, White, & Lochmiller, 2017; Wooffitt, 2005). Despite Foucault’s popularity, the use of FDA as a methodology in educational research is uncommon (Lester, Lochmiller, & Gabriel, 2017). Studies that apply FDA to educational policies tend to emphasize a number of aspects. The first emphasis is on an analysis of the policy language found in formal documents. For example, Hope (2015) applied FDA to e-safety policy documents in the United Kingdom to understand social values surrounding children, digital rights, and responsibility. Manathunga (2018) examined student mobility policies in Australia and New Zealand. Razack, Lessard, Hodges, Maguire, and Steinert (2014) examined policy language around student selection for medical schools in Canada. The second emphasis explores educational policies through the lens of everyday contexts (McKee, 2009) through local narratives. These studies focus on how people and policies interact, and how people negotiate their experience with existing policies. Burman et al. (2017) looked at the educational implications of the United Kingdom’s housing policy. Spohrer (2016) utilized a combination of these two emphases in her study on youths in the United Kingdom and their responses to school policies designed to increase their aspirations. She first examined formal policy documents for messages about aspiration and later interviewed students on their interpretation. Recent work by Bourke and Lidstone (2015) also combines both the policy language and discourse in situ in their application of FDA to Australian professional standards. In addition to examining policy, they also incorporated interviews with teachers. Despite different foci, all of these studies share a third emphasis: ultimately they are political in nature. They challenge existing assumptions and the status quo, and they frame education policy as embedded in a larger social context (Ball, 2005; 2015).

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FDA is well-suited to understand public policy for many reasons. Hewitt (2009) lays out four strengths of FDA which make it suitable for policy research. First, FDA looks at how individuals engage with government and institutions without making assumptions about intentions. Second, it “uncovers the diverse influences that define a policy problem” (Hewitt, 2009, p. 6). Third, FDA includes power dynamics in its conceptualization, which brings ideas of resistance, cooperation, and domination. Finally, Hewitt (2009) argues that FDA requires researchers to challenge traditional views of the policy process. I would add that FDA is well-suited to analyzing policy discourse on social media platforms. Social media provides a space for people to articulate their own ideas and share them with relative ease (McKenna, Myers, & Newman, 2017). Social media also has its own rules of discourse, shaped in large part by the medium (McLuhan, 1964). On Twitter, the medium takes place in different forms such as a tweet, retweet, or subtweet. Each of these activities is also laden with meaning not explicit within the text provided. These posts become a matter of record (oftentimes public record) and their contents are rich with qualitative data with text, images, photographs, and videos. There even is a means to categorize the data by topic through the use of hashtags. FDA can chronicle this discourse, with the ability to trace emergent trends and ideas. This analysis is powerful because it provides a way to explore policy through the lens of public opinion and belief. It is also flexible enough to adjust to new media. As people shift platforms from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, FDA can adjust along with the medium. FDA is particularly suited for a Digimodern reality because its focus is on discourse rather than the author of that discourse. In a Digimodern era, it is becoming more difficult to determine if an account is run by a person or by a bot—computer applications programmed to complete specific tasks. It is important to note that at the time the article was written, Twitter (2018) reported that it found 9.9 million accounts on its platform were bots, and that thousands of those bots played an active role in trying to disrupt the democratic process by influencing people’s perceptions. Be they human or bot, FDA works within that context to examine the discourse that is shaping public opinion. If we have learned any hard lessons from recent years, it is that verifiable facts can be rendered irrelevant in the face of a deeply compelling story. FDA provides a means to analyze these narratives, which for many comprise the “real” truth regardless of whether they spring from fact or from falsehood, human or computer. Why engage with, let alone analyze, narratives possibly rooted in fiction? Because the perpetuation of these narratives has material consequences. Policies rise and fall based on public misunderstanding or willful misrepresentation.

Application of FDA When writing about FDA as a methodology, there is one major challenge: There are no standard ways to apply FDA. To take a decidedly Foucauldian approach to apply FDA as a methodology creates a paradox. Writing a methodology paper about a Foucauldian method that strictly prescribes a methodology would not be in line with Foucault

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(Graham, 2005, 2011; Hewitt, 2009; McLaren, 2009). His work challenges and seeks to dismantle existing systems of power, and that includes the very systems that give legitimacy to his own work (Foucault, 1975, cited in Patton, 1979). Ultimately, the context of the study informs the methodology (Arribas-Allyon & Walkerdine, 2008; Gilbert et al., 2003). Instead of discussing FDA in a theoretical vacuum, I want to provide a research context to ground my FDA decisions. For this article, I focus on the discourse surrounding the CC as it occurred on Twitter. CC is a national set of standards in K-12 English Language Arts, mathematics, and science. It was designed to limit variation across states and standardize what students should know (McDonnell & Weatherford, 2013; Supovitz & Reinkordt, 2017). Rather than a prescribed way to conduct FDA, this is an illustration and explanation of one way a person may go about conducting an FDA on social media. Though there is no “true” way, this does not imply a lack of methodological guides. The first guides are the original works of Foucault. Any scholar who wishes to really apply Foucauldian methods to her study should begin by doing a thorough reading of Foucault’s works (Scheurich & McKenzie, 2005; St. Pierre, 2014). Foucault describes his works as “little toolboxes” wherein lie conceptual instruments (McLaren, 2009). In addition to Foucault’s oeuvre, several scholars have proffered ways to conduct an FDA in their respective fields. For example, in psychology, Arribas-Allyon and Walkerdine (2008) offer a “flexible guideline” and Willig (2001) proposes a six-stage process. Sociologists Kendall and Wickham (1999) have a five-step process. Political scientist, Hajer (2006) provides a 10-step process to conducting a Foucauldian influenced discourse analysis. Education researchers Bourke and Lidstone (2015) explain how they use Foucault’s archaeology to analyze policy. All of these works have influenced my own construction of FDA. In the latter sections of this article, I reference these authors when applicable.

An FDA of the CC Discourse Taking Place on Twitter The following sections have two goals. The first is to describe a way to conduct an FDA using data from social media platforms, in this case, exploring discourse on Twitter. The second is to explain the key FDA concepts that shaped the decisions I had made in the process. To accomplish these two goals, I interweave conceptual content with concrete application through each section. It is important to note that while the sections progress in a linear manner, FDA is not necessarily a linear process. Rather it is an iterative process, similar to many other qualitative methodologies.

Setting the Ontological and Epistemological Stage for FDA When working with postqualitative methods, St. Pierre (2014) suggests that we “begin with the epistemological and ontological commitments of the analysis” (p. 10). Since discourse analysis is largely an interpretive process, the positionality of the researcher plays an important role in how data are divided, interpreted, and reformed (Tracy &

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Mirivel, 2009). St. Pierre (2014) cautions that when working with postmodernist methodologies, it is important that ontology and epistemology are aligned—otherwise the methodology becomes “mechanized and instrumental and reduced to methods, process, and technique” (p. 3). One distinct feature of FDA is that ontology and epistemology play key roles in methodology. From a Foucauldian perspective, ontology and epistemology are functionally one and the same. The world is as we understand it to be, and not separate from our understanding. Taking St. Pierre’s suggestion, I provide four tenets to which one may ascribe as a starting place to situate oneself as a researcher within a Foucauldian world. There is no “Grand Narrative” of history. This point has been mentioned earlier in this article, but it needs to be made explicit as one of the tenants. Foucault (1972) eschews the idea of an objective grand narrative that suggests that history is a “rational process” with some teleological purpose (Hewitt, 2009; Scheurich & McKenzie, 2005). Foucault sees these “Grand Narratives” as myths society circulates as a means to make sense of the past and to justify the present. These grand narratives exist, but they are not absolute. Instead, there are local narratives that weave into or break away from others. Similarly, what we consider to be products of reason, policies for example, are also the result of “randomness, piecemeal fabrications, dissention, disparity, passion, hatred, contradictions” and so forth (Scheurich & McKenzie, 2005, p. 851). There are many interpretations of reality, and all are not created equal. It is through discourse that we understand our social reality and make sense of the world. DiazBone et al. (2008) explain that discourse is not a value-free explanation of the world, but instead a way of “‘worlding,’ of appropriating the world through knowledge” (p. 12). How we see the world is a result of complex interactions between actors and institutions privileging some discourses over others. Power and systems of knowledge are intrinsically linked. According to Foucault, power is omnipresent and functions through knowledge (Kendall & Wickham, 1999). The nexus of power–knowledge shapes “what is attended to, what is desirable to be done, how people an...