Talking about us and them: The formation of a new occupation’s ecosystem with digital technology use

Digital technologies such as social media have profoundly affected people’s work and their occupations. While research has started to examine how people work with digital technologies, much less is still known about how the use of these technologies participates in the formation of new occupations. Building upon existing literatures on the formation of occupations, digital technologies, and electronically mediated communications, we examine the use of microblogging to follow the emergence and growth of the occupation of data scientists and of the ecosystem of diverse actors talking about and positioning themselves with regard to the new occupation. Mixed-methods analyses reveal the emergence, growth and stabilization of an increasingly diversified ecosystem associated with the new occupation of data scientists. They reveal how microblogging use reflected and supported at first interconnections among different types of actors. Over time, though, as the burgeoning occupation went from nascent to more widely known, microblogging use started to support the siloing of talk among diverse actors about data scientists. Findings from this research hold implications for research on the formation of occupations, on the relational perspective on occupations, and on electronically-mediated communications.