Social media as social science data / Steven Lloyd Wilson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilson, Steven Lloyd, 1980- author.

Series:

Methods for social inquiry.

Methods for social inquiry

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social media.

Social media--Data processing.

Social sciences--Research--Methodology.

Social sciences.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 170 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University press, 2022.

Summary:

Social media has put mass communication in the hands of normal people on an unprecedented scale, and has also given social scientists the tools necessary to listen to the voices of everyday people around the world. This book gives social scientists the skills necessary to leverage that opportunity, and transform social media's vast stream of information into social science data. The book combines the big data techniques of computer science with social science methodology. Intended as a text for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in the social sciences, this book provides a methodological pathway for scholars who want to make use of this new and evolving source of data. It provides a framework for building one's own data collection and analysis infrastructure, a toolkit of content analysis, geographic analysis, and network analysis, and meditations on the ethical implications of social media data.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Title page

Copyright information

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Code Snippets

Acknowledgments

1. Why Social Media Matters to the Social Sciences

1.1 The Theory of Why It Matters

1.2 Using Social Media Data

2. Getting Started with Social Media Data

2.1 What Is Twitter Data?

2.2 Accessing Twitter Data

2.2.1 The Search API

2.2.2 The Streaming API

2.2.3 Other Access

2.3 The Nuts and Bolts of the Data

2.3.1 Unique Ids

2.3.2 User Data

2.3.3 The Tweet Text Itself

2.3.4 Languages

2.3.5 Times and Time Zones

2.3.6 Entities

2.4 Downloading Twitter Data

2.4.1 A Framework for Data Collection

2.4.2 Getting Set Up

2.4.3 A Basic Downloader

2.4.4 A Basic Processor

2.4.5 Adding a Database Backend

2.4.6 Processing Multiple Files

2.4.7 Collecting a Worldwide Sample

2.4.8 Compressing Data

2.5 Conclusion

3. Content Analysis of Social Media Data

3.1 Text and Twitter

3.1.1 Downloading Tweets by Keyword

3.1.2 Downloading Tweets by Language

3.2 Other Content from Tweets

3.2.1 Hashtags

3.2.2 Mentions

3.2.3 Links and Their Content

3.2.4 Extracting and Downloading Images

3.2.5 Extracting and Downloading Videos

3.3 Computer Content Analysis of Text

3.3.1 Tools for Text

3.3.2 Sentiment Analysis

3.3.3 Topic Modeling

3.3.4 Supervised Learning Models

3.4 Key Takeaways

4. Geospatial Analysis of Social Media Data

4.1 Data Availability

4.2 Collecting Geocoded Data from Twitter

4.3 Processing Geocoded Tweets

4.3.1 Caching Coordinates

4.3.2 Guessing the Right Country

4.3.3 Fuzzy Matching for Coastlines

4.3.4 Simplifying the Search Further

4.3.5 Subnational Matching

4.3.6 Matching Places

4.4 Grid Cell Identification

4.5 Solving the Location Problem

4.6 Key Takeaways.

5. Network Analysis of Social Media Data

5.1 Getting Started with Networks

5.2 Collecting Data by User

5.2.1 A One-Time Timeline Downloader

5.2.2 An Infrastructure for Timeline Downloading

5.2.3 Additional User Data

5.2.4 Sample Project: Tracking Congress

5.3 Networks of Friends and Followers

5.3.1 Friend Networks

5.3.2 Co-friend Networks

5.3.3 Networks with Entities as Nodes

5.4 Basics of Network Analysis

5.5 Solving the Bot Problem

5.6 Key Takeaways

6. The Ethics of Using Social Media Data

6.1 Social Media and the IRB

6.2 Ethics in Web Scraping

6.3 Researcher Trauma

6.4 A Researcher's Perspective

References

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 03 Nov 2022).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781108755573

1108755577

9781108759281

1108759289

9781108677561

1108677568