Doing social media analytics

78Citations
Citations of this article
313Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

This article is free to access.

Abstract

In the few years since the advent of ‘Big Data’ research, social media analytics has begun to accumulate studies drawing on social media as a resource and tool for research work. Yet, there has been relatively little attention paid to the development of methodologies for handling this kind of data. The few works that exist in this area often reflect upon the implications of ‘grand’ social science methodological concepts for new social media research (i.e. they focus on general issues such as sampling, data validity, ethics, etc.). By contrast, we advance an abductively oriented methodological suite designed to explore the construction of phenomena played out through social media. To do this, we use a software tool – Chorus – to illustrate a visual analytic approach to data. Informed by visual analytic principles, we posit a two-by-two methodological model of social media analytics, combining two data collection strategies with two analytic modes. We go on to demonstrate each of these four approaches ‘in action’, to help clarify how and why they might be used to address various research questions.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Brooker, P., Barnett, J., & Cribbin, T. (2016). Doing social media analytics. Big Data and Society, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716658060

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free