Speculative method and Twitter: Bots, energy and three conceptual characters

• Published in: The Sociological review (Keele) Vol. 63; no. 1; pp. 79 - 101
• Main Authors: Wilkie, Alex, Michael, Mike, Plummer-Fernandez, Matthew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2015; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Bots; Communication; Community; Conceptualization; digital methods; diplomat; Energy; energy-demand reduction; Ethnography; idiot; Innovations; parasite; performativity; Power demand; science and technology studies; Social science research; Social sciences; Social theory; software roBots; speculative methods; Twitter; parasite; Bots; energy-demand reduction; digital methods; idiot; Twitter; diplomat; science and technology studies; speculative methods; performativity; software roBots
• ISSN: 0038-0261; 1467-954X
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-954X.12168

This paper aims to contribute to recent innovations in social scientific methodology that aspire to address the complex, iterative and performative dimensions of method. In particular, we focus on the becoming-with character of social events, and propose a speculative method for engaging with the not-as-yet. This work, being part of a larger project that uses Speculative Design and ethnographic methods to explore energy-demand reduction, specifically considers the ways in which energy-demand reduction features in the Twitter-sphere. Developing and deploying three automated Bots whose function and communications are at best obscure, and not uncommonly nonsensical, we trace some of ways in which they intervene and provoke. Heuristically, we draw on the ‘conceptual characters’ of idiot, parasite and diplomat in order to grasp how the Bots act within Twitter to evoke the instability and emergent eventuations of energy-demand reduction, community and related practices. We conclude by drawing out some of the wider implications of this particular enactment of speculative method.