This document discusses new approaches to researching social media at scale using data mining and network analysis techniques. It notes that while traditional qualitative and small-scale quantitative research on social media provides insights, there is a need to study phenomena like communities and user behaviors over large populations and extended timeframes. The document outlines tools like crawlers, scrapers, and network/text analyzers that can access and analyze massive amounts of publicly available social media data. It provides examples of how such techniques could shed light on dynamics in domains like blogs, music listening, and Wikipedia editing. The document calls for more interdisciplinary work at the intersection of cultural studies, computer science, and research technologies to fully realize the potential of these new approaches.