Texting in motion: Keystroke logging and observing synchronous mobile discourse

This study explores the efficacy of keystroke logging as a method to qualitatively investigate the synchronous processes of discursive interaction through mobile devices as individuals go about their everyday lives. Heeding cautions from Boase (2013) concerning software variability across mobile technologies, as well as challenges from ？rmen and Thorhauge (2015) to use log data for qualitative research, our study offers one such methodological roadmap for observing—from the software side—the complex entanglements of humans and mobile technologies as they engage in mediated discourse. Our study draws upon keystroke analysis from the tradition of writing process research (Leijten & van Waes, 2013; Wengelin, 2006), as well as posthumanist methodologies for observing cybernetic interactions (Giddings, 2014), and extends Farman’s (2012) argument that asynchronous forms of mobile communication, such as text messaging, are performatively synchronous, since interlocutors are pulled toward embodied copresence via the mediated space. In doing so, we present a preliminary study of methods for directly observing how discursive processes manifest in-the-moment as a complex flow between human, machinic, and spatial components in a network assemblage