On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Liz <nwjerseyliz@yahoo.com> wrote:
1) There are some hashtag-related websites that collect Tweet "chats" that are organized around particular topics where a hashtag is used (such as "prchat", "educhat" "jounchal", etc.). You could examine the discussion that occurs over time from a particular set of user who are employed in a field or interested in it.
That's the approach I'm taking right now. I'm also fortunate enough that the participants that use the hashtag are very organized and publicly archive their discussions (they're moderated and scheduled in advance). And since it's all public I sailed through IRB without a problem. What the hastag?! (http://wthashtag.com/Main_Page) seems to be a popular choice for this kind of searching and monitoring of hashtags. But like Twitter their archives don't seem to go back more than a few days so you'll need to take that into consideration. Kevin