Social Psychological Research Methods: Social Psychological Measurement Harvesting and Harnessing Social Media Data for Psychological Research Social media, also termed social networking sites, comprise websites, web-based services, platforms, and applications that allow individuals to “(1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (, Boyd & Ellison, 2007, p. 211), as well as (4) “create and share content or to participate in social networking” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Oxford University, 2017). Nowadays, social media use has become extremely …show more content…
Researchers can now collect a wide range of information about a population, including non-semantic and semantic features, on social media platforms. The analysis of social media data has allowed researchers to uncover numerous aspects about its users at the individual, community, and national levels. In fact, an emerging field of scholars has analyzed social media data to understand a wide range of behaviors and attitudes, including but not limited to consumer decisions, influenza infections, and political opinions. The procedures to use social media data for research include data harvesting and harnessing. In the following sections, we first provide a detailed overview of common platforms and different harvesting methods and then review the latest harnessing techniques, including the identification of non-semantic and semantic features and the corresponding analytical techniques. We also provide a discussion of important semantic features, including topics and the use for sentiment analysis and opinion spam detection. In the last section, we present an example to illustrate how social media data can be utilized for predictive and explanatory models. Finally, we end this chapter by describing ongoing challenges and future directions of measuring social media data in psychological research. 1. Social Media Platforms With about a dozen social media platforms and over 100 million active users worldwide (Statista, 2016; Mangukiya,
In conclusion social media offers billions of opportunities to collect intelligence daily. Social media allows real time intelligence collection at low cost. The downside is the validity of the intelligence needs to be confirmed, and our adversaries can use social media platforms for denial and deception. Regardless of the negatives social media offers immeasurable opportunities for intelligence collection in the near and long term if utilized properly and with an understanding of its
Since the Bulletin Board System there has been hundreds, and counting, of social networks created: most notably Twitter, Facebook, Kik, Snapchat, and Instagram. Today there are just over 3 billion active Internet users (45% of the world’s internet users), 2.1 billion of those people have social media accounts (Jeffbullas.com). People use social media for many numerous reasons. Most use social media to stay close to relatives and maintain social ties. Some of people’s most essential daily needs are accounted for by social media: whether it be interacting with friends or coworkers, following politics, or following the latest fashion trend set by the Kardashian
These days social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become an essential part of our daily lives in America. It is through media sources such as these that have enabled communication among people on a global scale along with uniting people with similar interests and ideas together in a positive manner. According to statistics from the Pew Research Center, around seven in ten Americans use some type of social media (Pew Research). The development of mobile devices has played a significant role in the widespread development of social media by facilitating the access to these sites. Today the use of social media is for purposes of
New innovations to technology have provided people easier and more frequent access to social media sites and apps. According to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority in 2014 social media was most commonly accessed via laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Social media is the number one thing Canadians do online. (CIRA, 2014). Every social media site posts the number of users that it has on a worldwide scale. Given this is a Canadian proposed study here are some statistics of Canadian social media use. According to a survey done by Canadian’s internet.com Business in 2015 about 56% use Facebook, 16% use instagram, 30% Linkedin and 25% use Twitter. (McKinnon, 2015)
1. Although intuition plays a role on what we believe to be true, it can not always be trusted. Hindsight bias and overconfidence are part of this intuition that is unreliable. Hindsight bias is when someone believes that they knew the outcome of something all along only after learning the outcome. Overconfidence is when someone thinks they know more than they really do. An example of hindsight bias is when a person is told that a couple broke up and they claim they knew it was going to happen all along. They may have never even thought of that before but after hearing about it, it seemed it was totally possible and inevitable.
In this day and age, social media has become an integral part of our lives. It has created a platform for people to share information instantly and communicate with people all around the world. Facebook is the most outstanding example of successful social media network. According to the first quarter 2015 earnings announcement by Facebook, the site has achieved 1.44 billion active users per month, and 65% of which are daily active users. Other social networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are also a powerful means of communication. With such a large audience, social networking sites provide ample opportunities to acquire information, network, and connect with friends.
Social media has emerged as the most powerful form of communication these days. The ability to voice an opinion from anywhere over anything has coined and popularized the term ‘Global Citizen. Many social platforms available these days provide the avenues for the companies and organization to make a brand for themselves by directly engaging with their customers. If you don’t like some brand you bought or a movie you just watched, login on Twitter or Facebook and tell the world. These platforms provide an access into what is currently trending or making the stir at the moment. Thus, there is a huge repository of opinionated data that if harnessed strategically can help to solve problems ranging from what product to invest into complex business
Technology as a whole has changed the way we live our everyday lives in numerous ways. We now have the opportunity to do many things with a touch of a button, to name a few, starting our cars, tying our shoes, or accessing the world of social media. The single piece of technology that has impacted most of us today is the cellular phone, which leads us to the wonders of the Internet. In today’s society there is a plethora of troubles we face, what comforts most of us and makes our lives a little easier is the world of social media. Social media sites like Facebook, Snapchat, Tinder, Twitter, and countless other websites can help us feel connected with the world and/or our surroundings. To most people social media might
The almost omnipresent Internet transforms our lives, connecting us to family, friends, and the world in ways inconceivable only a few years ago. Through social media, we actively participate in creating, editing, and consuming a never-ending stream of data. Private corporations and protagonists of political or social change all vie to reach and engage highly targeted
Social media is defined as “websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.” However a more accurate definition of social media is as follows: “the relationships that exist between network of people” (Wiang, 3). Although social media traces back to before the 1800s, it is something that has become especially popular over the last two decades. What is interesting about this is that technology began going through a sense of both change and advancement of after
Social media has gained immense popularity, following increased access to the internet and technology devices including smart phones. Social media is used to denote platforms in which people build and share social connections; thus enhancing information sharing and interaction. Major examples include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram. Through social media, people can connect, interact and exchange information such as pictures, videos and other digital media by registering as users in these platforms and updating information affecting their lives on their profiles. When social media applications came into existence, these were mostly used for interacting and sharing with friends, relations and new friends acquired through these platforms. Social media has however been constantly abused, as people turn it into a ground to vent, lie, insult, bully or threaten others. The social networks no longer serve their intended purpose in the society and users have taken advantage of the free space to say whatever they want with no regard to how it affects others. People have used such domains to brandish their selfish acts and gains.
Social networking is helpful for everyone that knows how to use networking in their everyday life. Social Networking is not only going on nationally, It is a vast group, that’s been going on internationally. People from all over the world take part in it. It has information about anything. Anything new, everything old and whatever the reader wants to know. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are few of the important Social networking sites that are playing an important role, now a day in the life of a person. As of July 2015 there has been a huge increase in the number of people who has started using social networking websites more and more. “76% of American adults online use social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, as of July 2015, up from 26% in 2008”. (Social Networking 2015). This shows how much increase in social networking has in adults, who are relatively new to this. The youngsters are way ahead and around 98% of the young users are found on the websites like Facebook and Twitter.
The world has never before been connected as much as it is today. One’s ability to communicate through various mediums is rapidly advancing, and this is much thanks to social media.
The power of the internet has grown rapidly and so has the use of social media. Vanessa Denice provides us with some quick facts about social media and it’s literally millions of users. So many people are online in today’s world that Facebook, in a single day, hit 1 billion active users (Denice). This proves that social media is a rapidly growing platform and with any growing platform comes change. This change is debatable as to whether it is for the better or worse.
The widespread use of social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn have been generating large amounts of data which are interchangeably known as social data. This data is usually user-generated, inconsistent, and incomplete and have geo information. This data can be used by researchers or companies to extract meaningful information about human behavior, product consumption, trends in markets, etc. Extraction and study of this data for useful purposes is called data mining of social media. Since the number of techniques used to mine data are increasing rapidly with time, it has become imperative to represent the data in a form which can be easily understood. Data mining may consist of the following stages. First, data is extracted,