social media

a non-traditional approach using functional environments with user-generated content creation and sharing

why use online data?

>wealth of public attitudes, interactions, and opinions >diverse, large-scale, naturally-occurring data >access hard-to-reach populations

uses of online data

>tracking of virus outbreaks >detection of illnesses >inform practice, policy, services and development of interventions

Emotional Contagion Case Study

>Kramer et al. (2013) >manipulated news feed of Facebook users >individuals seeing more negative stories posted more negative stories >individuals seeing more positive stories posted more positive stories

Public Reactions to EC Study

>Hallinan et al. (2020) >analysed public comments on news articles about the study >Themes: living in a lab, manipulation anxieties, wake up, sheeple, and no big deal

Limitations with Textual Data

>only access public tweets >not possible to verify diagnosis >API software focuses on relevance, not completeness >demographic information limited by authors >searching used quotes may break anonymity

Issues with Video Data

>carefully identify search terms and inclusion criteria >transcription can be time consuming >risk of content being removed >copyright >challenges of including video stills

Limitations of Instagram

>data manually captured >textual data retrieval is time consuming >multi-modal nature is complex to analyse >privacy must be preserved

The 'Scroll Back Method'

>Robards and Lincoln (2017) >uses profile timelines to reflect everyday, mundane experiences >forms 'growing up' narrative >participants as 'co-analysts' >combined with interview for context and deeper meaning >rich, detailed personal data in one place