Open Tools for Social Media Research

For you researchers who have long awaited open-source tools to start analyzing social media networks, the time has come. The Social Media Research Foundation (SMFR), comprised of a collection of researchers, is a non-profit organization that specializes in the development of open tools and data to aid scholars with social media-related research. Despite the recent emergence of these tools provided by the SMRF for folks in the academy, social scientists have begun taking full advantage of these tools (see Marc Smith’s story).

Annotated Bibliography: Social Media for Recruitment

Illustration by Kathleen Donovan

The ways in which scholars engage in research are gradually shifting. In the age of technology, information can be disseminated freely in a relatively short span of time. Scholars around the world are obtaining information and exchanging resources in and across their disciplines as result of social networking.

In addition to networking, surveys can be distributed via Facebook and the latest resources for faculty and students in the academy can be shared on Twitter. Social media in the western world has become such a large component of our existence that we would be remiss to not take advantage of its potential.

Recently, we put together a Social Media Annotated Bibliography (click to download the .docx file) on online survey recruitment using social media, particularly social networking sites. Although much of the literature suggests that online survey research can produce diverse convenience samples at a minimal cost to the researcher, the literature in this area also touches on crucial ethical and methodological issues in online research as well.

Provoking Big Data

As computing power expands exponentially, excitement in the research community grows regarding the availability, prevalence, and newfound ease in analyzing large data sets known colloquially as “Big Data”. Even the humanities (in the form of digital humanities) have begun to embrace computation as a mode of study, and popular publications have all but declared qualitative research dead.

Drawing on David Berry’s idea of the “computational turn” in the humanities and social sciences, researchers danah boyd and Kate Crawford raise serious, timely, and well-grounded questions about the implications, assumptions, and norms around the growing use of “Big Data” in their article, “Six Provocations for Big Data”.

The issues are largely intertwining questions of access, control, academic freedom, research ethics, and the assumptions, contours, and values of social research.

This article is valuable for anyone interested in the future of research and the use of social media data, and should provoke conversation, or at least inspire questions and second thoughts about the use of Big Data in studying society as a whole.

Web Methods

The internet is becoming an increasingly indispensable part of social research practice, but how often do we stop to think about the characteristics of the online spaces in which we work? Investigating differences in response rates for online surveys across racial and ethnic groups? Questioning the extent to which social media trains internet denizens in the art of self-presentation and how this may affect their responses? Exploring the novel implications of snowball sampling on Facebook? As our research comes to rely more and more on the web to generate data and recruit participants, these questions become increasingly urgent.

Graphic sociology considers the demographic profiles of blogging communities using a new dataset from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The rich dataset may help enterprising researchers to address some of these issues.

Social Media: Do I Know You?

This essay marks the first in a series by SSRC’s resident social media specialist, Thom Fredericks, exploring the use of social media in social science research. We’ll be happy to work with you on incorporating social media as a research object or tool, or to publicize your research and connect with other researchers and communities. 

Many of us think we know what social media is, how it’s used, and what it’s all about. However, social media is an ever-changing form, prone to shifting like a leaf in the wind. People, web-users, software designers, and the marketplace are always changing how technology and innovation are used and therefore how they are defined and adopted. Social media is one form of technological innovation that is continually being reshaped and redefined. So then, what is social media and how can we use it in the worlds of social science and the humanities? Let’s begin by taking a quick look at what social media is.

Social media outlets consist of a variety of Internet communications from forums and blogs (text, video, audio) to content sharing (photo, video, social book marking, etc). Each of these forms helps the user develop a social presence, or social identity, through the process of self-presentation, self-disclosure, and content creation. For those who follow the concepts of Erving Goffman, the social media world is a virtual cornucopia of information and an excellent resource to tap into.

Most agree that there are four main types of social media, each with a slightly different use: collaborative efforts (forums, wikis), individual efforts (blogs/microblogs), content communities (photo/video sharing), and social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn). There are also two other large social media enclaves worth mentioning: worlds and virtual social worlds. (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010)*

Social media is made up of user-generated content and relies on an interactive communication that is largely reciprocal (commenting, sharing links, link-backs). At its core, social media is about connecting with others – individuals, groups, and institutional organizations. It’s about networking and building your network. It can be used for marketing, informing, sharing thoughts and opinions, or engaging with friends and family on a personal level. However you choose to participate in social media, it requires a personal investment of time and consistent effort to provide content and engage with others in that particular social media form.

Sharing information and taking part in this highly flexible and easily accessible medium does not necessarily equate to a high degree of interaction. Successfully instituting such an initiative takes time, planning, and careful consideration. When implementing a social media strategy one needs to determine a purpose and an audience, keeping in mind that such efforts are not always easily measured. Successfully measuring your campaigns will depend on your purpose and your intended audience. Most importantly, when developing a social media strategy, especially for the social sciences and humanities, one needs to be creative and think outside the box.

*Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein (2010). ”Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media”.