scholarly journals Perspective: Acknowledging Data Work in the Social Media Research Lifecycle

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina E. Kinder-Kurlanda ◽  
Katrin Weller

This perspective article suggests considering the everyday research data management work required to accomplish social media research along different phases in a data lifecycle to inform the ongoing discussion of social media research data’s quality and validity. Our perspective is informed by practical experience of archiving social media data, by results from a series of qualitative interviews with social media researchers, as well as by recent literature in the field. We emphasize how social media researchers are entangled in complexities between social media platform providers, social media users, other actors, as well as legal and ethical frameworks, that all affect their everyday research practices. Research design decisions are made iteratively at different stages, involving many decisions that may potentially impact the quality of research. We show that these decisions are often hidden, but that making them visible allows us to better understand what drives social media research into specific directions. Consequently, we argue that untangling and documenting choices during the research lifecycle, especially when researchers pursue specific approaches and may have actively decided against others (often due to external factors) is necessary and will help to spot and address structural challenges in the social media research ecosystem that go beyond critiques of individual opportunistic approaches to easily accessible data.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akash Shroff ◽  
Chantelle A Roulston ◽  
Marian Ruiz ◽  
Sharon Chen

The Social Media Research Network was co-founded by Chantelle Roulston and Akash Shroff in August 2021 with the support of Dr. Jessica Schleider and the Lab for Scalable Mental Health (LSMH). Since 2018, LSMH has been recruiting adolescents and parents using social media—primarily Facebook and Instagram. As of September 2021, our social media presence has reached 1.4 million people across the world. More than 35,000 individuals have interacted with our posts and messages and more than 6,000 youth, young adults, and parents have completed our single-session interventions. We wanted to share our current success and improve our processes by forming a collaboration of psychology/adolescent development research labs.The SMRN Social Media Toolkit is designed to consolidate social media experiences and suggestions from various labs into a useful document for others to use. This is by no means an exhaustive list of social media platforms and suggestions. We have limited the toolkit to include the use of Facebook and Instagram, owned and trademarked by Meta Platforms, Inc.. Instagram and Facebook encompass a very large audience (diverse in age, location, and race/ethnicity). The platforms have a lot of overlap and have been successful in research efforts for the authors. This toolkit outlines broad concepts of branding, post design, and post management. It also provides details, suggestions, and tips on how to create an account, gain a following, increase engagement, and more on both Facebook and Instagram. . Lastly, it details the process of using paid Facebook and Instagram advertisements for research purposes (i.e., recruiting participants).The ultimate goal of SMRN is to increase collaboration across research groups so that we can leverage the entire network’s social media presence to improve recruitment, science communication, and outreach efforts for all research groups involved. We hope this document will serve as a preliminary guide for the research groups within the network.


Author(s):  
Efi A. Nisiforou ◽  
Andrew Laghos

The rapid growth and the popularity of Social Network Sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of millions of students for many different purposes. The chapter reviews the background of the current social media research in relation to the international literature and tackles the most important findings. The practical part of the chapter outlines the results of a survey on social media services. The findings provide real research evidence on online social technology use amongst university students. The chapter has educational and theoretical significance and shapes future directions for research on this issue. A compendium of terms, definitions, and explanations of concepts is clearly explained.


2012 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyoungkoo Khang ◽  
Eyun-Jung Ki ◽  
Lan Ye

Drawing upon the social media phenomena in both practical and academic arenas, this study explored patterns and trends of social media research over the past fourteen years across four disciplines. Findings exhibit a definite increasing number of social-media-related studies. This indicates that social media have gained incremental attention among scholars, and who have, in turn, been responding and keeping pace with the increased usage and impact of this new medium. The authors suggest that future scholarly endeavors emphasize prospective aspects of social media, foreseeing applications and technological progress and elaborating theory.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (7) ◽  
pp. 2691-2719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khaldoon Nusair ◽  
Irfan Butt ◽  
S.R. Nikhashemi

Purpose While the importance of social media will continue to grow, the purpose of this study is to provide a retrospective systematic literature review of the social media research published in major hospitality and tourism journals over a specific time period. Design/methodology/approach The study conducted a bibliometric analysis to review the literature of 439 social media articles published in 51 hospitality and tourism journals over a 15-year time span (2002-2016). Findings Ulrike Gretzel authored the highest fractional citations. The results indicated that social media-related research was mostly published in top-tier journals. The International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management was amongst the four leading journals in terms of the percentage of published social media articles. While inter-country social media research collaborations were relatively modest, interestingly, inter-country collaborations have been steadily increasing in the past five years. Another finding indicated that social media research in hospitality and tourism journals has been predominantly quantitative. The results revealed six new areas within the consumer behaviour research theme, namely, eWOM, service recovery, customer satisfaction, brand/destination image and service quality. Finally, it is important to note that four new trends in social media research appeared between 2011 and 2016, namely, big data, netnography, Travel 2.0 and Web 2.0. Research limitations/implications While this study made significant contributions to the social media literature, some limitations do exist. For example, the current research excluded publications from major conferences, books, book chapters and dissertations. Additionally, it is not within the scope of this paper to take into account issues related to self-citations. Practical implications The results obtained from analysis contribute to a comprehensive understanding of social media research progress in hospitality and tourism. For example, evaluating the performance of individual scholars helps educational institutions to compete in the global university ranking system. Additionally, to compete for funding opportunities on the topic of social media, institutions can use citation counts to demonstrate their competitiveness. Furthermore, due to the expected future growth in the number of social media platforms, practitioners need to understand motivating factors and tourists’ needs in different countries, target market segments, age groups and cultures to create highly engaging communities around their brands. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the sample of this study synthesized the largest selection of social media articles published in hospitality and tourism journals. This is the first study to apply the fractional score at the author level, the adjusted appearance score at the university level and the average citation score at the journal and inter-country levels in the analysis. In addition, prevalent research orientations and research trends in social media made significant contributions to existing literature.


Informatics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Hani Brdesee ◽  
Wafaa Alsaggaf

As social media has shifted from traditional to modern technical patterns, organizations have sought to take advantage of the presence of beneficiaries on social networks. They may serve customers, display ads, and respond to queries on social media accounts such as Twitter. The implementation of these services required a scientific study considering: (1) how to attract beneficiaries, (2) attraction times, and (3) measurement of the impact of that attraction. This study aimed to address these three points through an analysis of data from an educational organization’s Twitter account. We found that the interaction rates with tweets increased in the evening, and we identified the best times for the organization to reach more followers. We examined five months of data (an entire semester), analyzing thousands of tweets and their associated impressions, types of responses, integration ratio, and account usage. We also discovered that the quality of tweets had an impact on attracting new followers, particularly when tweeting media such as photos, videos, and other types of content. Finally, this research serves as a resource for educational organizations on new ways to publish accounts and foster organizational growth through electronic media.


2019 ◽  
pp. 216747951986007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Kunert

This study examines how female football (soccer) fans use the social media platform Tumblr to interact and talk about their fandom, what purposes Tumblr serves for them, and why they prefer it to other social media platforms. As women are often marginalised in offline and online sports discourse, Tumblr’s football fandom was chosen to investigate how women experience their fandom on a platform with a mostly female and young user population. The results of 14 in-depth qualitative interviews with heavily invested female Tumblr users show that the fandom’s communication culture allows fans to interact in a variety of creative ways that involve the use of a specialist vocabulary. This Tumblr fandom is overwhelmingly female, which makes the interviewees feel that they can talk freely about football. Thus, Tumblr has the potential to serve as a safe space for female fans. Yet, its highly opinionated discussions and rivalries mirror those in the traditional football fandom. This study contributes to the literature that explores how women express their sports fandom online and demonstrates how they have found a niche in which to discuss their favourite sport on their own terms.


2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (6) ◽  
pp. 791-808 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nunan ◽  
Baskin Yenicioglu

The use of online data is becoming increasingly essential for the generation of insight in today's research environment. This reflects the much wider range of data available online and the key role that social media now plays in interpersonal communication. However, the process of gaining permission to use social media data for research purposes creates a number of significant issues when considering compatibility with professional ethics guidelines. This paper critically explores the application of existing informed consent policies to social media research and compares with the form of consent gained by the social networks themselves, which we label ‘uninformed consent’. We argue that, as currently constructed, informed consent carries assumptions about the nature of privacy that are not consistent with the way that consumers behave in an online environment. On the other hand, uninformed consent relies on asymmetric relationships that are unlikely to succeed in an environment based on co-creation of value. The paper highlights the ethical ambiguity created by current approaches for gaining customer consent, and proposes a new conceptual framework based on participative consent that allows for greater alignment between consumer privacy and ethical concerns.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document