Subject Guides: Social Media Research: Additional resources

Additional resources

On data collection:

SAGE's big data initiative SAGE Ocean maintains an extensive list of tools used in social media research
- A guest blog post from Volunteer Science CEO Jason Radford provides some helpful explanations about manual and automated collection methods for social media data.
Social Media Data Stewardship's Social Media Research Toolkit

"Citing Social Media" in the Library's Citation Style Guide

The AU Library provides an FAQ and a Subject Guide on "Text Mining" and content analysis which covers what text mining is as well as considerations for doing text mining work on academic papers in library databases.

On social media research history and challenges:

"How to fix social media? Start with independent research.", a blog post from think tank The Brookings Institution that explains the concerns social media platforms have regarding user privacy and the concerns researchers have regarding social media platform transparency, as well as major turning points in social media research that have lead to the current situation. Highly recommended reading.

Social Media and Misinformation

Junkipedia is a platform that combines crowdsourcing, sophisticated automatic collection techiques, and automatic linking between related items to help track the spread of misinformation on social media. Used by a combination of journalists, activists, and researchers. Must apply and give institutional affiliation and reason for use to get access.

Voxgov

Voxgov This link opens in a new window
Voxgov provides real-time access to social media feeds, press releases, publications, and documents from the federal government, It has built-in features for working with government social media, including creating .csv datasets from search results, creating graphs for how frequently your search terms were tweeted by government accounts, most commonly associated terms or people, and more! *AU community only*

Social media research methods guides

As mentioned in the introduction, this guide is not meant to be comprehensive nor is it focused on the research methodologies used to work with social media. You may want to consult books, whitepapers, or other sources for more information on methodologies, particularly within your specific field.

The Sage Handbook of Social Media Research Methods by Sloan, Luke
ISBN: 1473987210
Publication Date: 2016
This entry in the SAGE Handbook series covers all aspects of social media research, from research design to methods and platform-specific considerations. Highly recommended resource for any prospective social media researcher
The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods by Nigel G. Fielding (Editor); Raymond M. Lee (Editor); Grant Blank (Editor)
ISBN: 1473918782
Publication Date: 2017
Broader in scope than the Handbook of Social Media Research Methods, this book covers some topics in social media directly as well as many more in general internet research. This includes content and sentiment analysis of online data, reaching marginalized communities via the internet, and online research design. Highly recommended resource for any prospective social media researcher
Introduction to Social Media Investigation by Jennifer Golbeck
ISBN: 0128016566
Publication Date: 2015
Written by nationally-recognized social media research expert and UMD professor Jen Golbeck, this is a guide to investigating specific individuals' profiles across the internet. Some of the case studies or specific methodologies included may be out of date, but the chapters on "Types of Personal Information", "Privacy Controls", and especially "Legal Issues" are all still relevant and informative to social media research broadly.
Mining Social Media: Finding Stories in Internet Data by Vo, Lam Thuy
ISBN: 1593279175
Publication Date: 2019
Lam Thuy Vo is a journalism professor and data journalist. This book is intended for users with an interest in the topic but no background in coding, and progresses through topics including accessing APIs, web scraping, and analysis in spreadsheet programs as well as programmatic analysis in Python. Focuses on concrete techniques and strategies.
The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography by Larissa Hjorth (Editor); Heather Horst (Editor); Anne Galloway (Editor); Genevieve Bell (Editor)
ISBN: 9781138940918
Publication Date: 2016
A methodology guide for "digital ethnography", the term used in anthropology, sociology, and related fields for the study of people or communities by observing their online behaviors.

Acknowledgements

This guide was originally written by Andrew Greenman in May of 2022.

This guide is indebted in ideas, links, and language to the excellent subject guides at other libraries that came before it, in particular:

"Social Media Research Guide", from the University of Michigan
"Text Mining & Analysis @ Pitt", from the University of Pittsburg Library System
"Social Media Research", from the University of Minnesota