Using social media images as data in social science research

Abstract

We conducted a scoping review to identify and describe trends in the use of social media images as data sources to inform social science research in published articles from 2015 to 2019. The identified trends include the following: (1) there is increasing interest in social media images as research data, especially in disciplines like sociology, cultural studies, communication and environmental studies; (2) the photo sample size is often smaller than that is typically used in text-based social media analysis and usually is collected manually; (3) thematic coding, object recognition and narrative analysis are the most popular analysis methods that are often conducted manually; (4) computer vision and machine-learning technologies have been increasingly but still infrequently used and are not fit for all purposes; and (5) relatively few papers mention ethics and privacy issues, or apply strategies to address ethical issues. We identify noteworthy research gaps, and opportunities to address limitations and challenges.