Social Construction of Blockchain on Social Media: Framing Public Discourses on Twitter
Peter A. Chow-White
Simon Fraser University (Correspondence: petercw@sfu.ca)
Ahmed Al-Rawi
Simon Fraser University
Alberto Lusoli
Simon Fraser University
Vu Thuy Anh Phan
Ryerson and York Universities
Citation: Chow-White, P. A., Al-Rawi, A., Lusoli, A., & Phan, V. T. A. (2021). Social construction of blockchain on social media: Framing public discourses on Twitter. Journal of Communication Technology, 4(2), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.51548/joctec-2021-008
Abstract: Blockchain has become a hot topic in technology, finance, regulation, and the wider society in recent years. Along the way, various users and interests have shaped the technology materially and discursively. This paper investigates the debate taking place on Twitter surrounding blockchain technology to understand the nature and development of its online public discourses. We collected and analyzed a Twitter dataset containing a total of 267,512 tweets that reference blockchain by 105,734 unique users. We conducted a mixed method research study involving qualitative and quantitative approaches. The results indicate that the majority of the retweeted posts are educational and promotional in nature, while the lowest numbers of frames are critical or skeptical of the new technology. The most active users seem to be largely involved in promoting the technology including some that are human created bots. The paper employs the theory of Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) that emphasizes the way our actions and discourses shape technology. We argue that a number of active Twitter users, for a variety of motives including financial ones, are shaping the discourse about blockchain by mostly framing it as a positive development in the global market, allegedly creating a revolution in the financial sector. More importantly, the social construction of technology on Twitter does not seem to be exclusively organic, for it includes bots and online spammers who mostly tweet promotional blockchain hashtags.
Keywords: blockchain, Bitcoin, social construction of technology, social media, public discourse