Accepting the challenges of social media research

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new viewpoint series, Monitoring the Media: Spotlight on Social Media Research, by providing an overview of the key challenges in social media research and some current initiatives in addressing them. Design/methodology/approach -The paper considers publication output from disciplines dealing with social media studies and summarises the key challenges as discussed in the broader research community. Findings -The paper suggests that challenges originate both from the interdisciplinary nature of social media research and from the ever-changing research landscape. It concludes that, whilst the community is addressing some challenges, others require more attention.Originality/value -The paper summarises key challenges of social media and will be of interest to researchers in different disciplines, as well as a general audience, wanting to learn about how social media data are used for research.

Participation in Social Media: Studying Explicit and Implicit Forms of Participation in Communicative Social Networks

“…At worst, research could be limited only to data that are freely available. This phenomenon is already evident, as shown in the amount of social media research focusing on Twitter due to the platform's comparatively easy and stable data access (Weller, 2015). Another point is that a majority of online participation is increasingly unreachable and hidden from researchers.…”

“…Quantitative and qualitative data also require various analytical skills, and multidisciplinary research is often necessary. In social media research, the lack of technical skills may lead to limited data and biased analysis (Weller, 2015). In addition, we should not become blinded by new data and methods.…”

Addressing the Challenge of Guiding Our Students on how to Deal with Fake News

“…Social media are constantly evolving (Weller, 2015) and currently they can take the form of simple interpersonal online sites, blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking, virtual worlds and enterprise social networks, to name a few (Aichner & Jacob, 2015). In addition, the creation of automated or semi-automated bots presents the impression that an individual might be communicating with the receiver.…”

Forschungsdaten und Forschungsdatenmanagement in den Sozialwissenschaften

“…Stellen Social-Media-Daten noch ein Moving Target (Weller 2015) in den Sozialwissenschaften und dem sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschungsdatenmanagement dar, ist die Verknüpfung von Umfrage-und Geodaten ein einfacheres Unterfangen. Beide Datentypen sind nicht neu, ihre Verknüpfung stellt allerdings besondere Herausforderungen an Forschende.…”