This document discusses social media research (SMR) as a qualitative research method. SMR involves analyzing existing data from social media platforms rather than conducting surveys or focus groups. It has advantages like accessing large amounts of variable data over time, but disadvantages like lack of demographics. The document outlines ethical considerations for SMR and software that can help analyze social media content. Overall it presents SMR as a viable primary data source for qualitative research.

1. SOCIAL MEDIA IN
QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
Exploring Key Points in Understanding Social
Media Research
Katrin A. Sawatzky
University of Guelph
EDRD6000 13/03/14

2. Context
 The social media revolution has changed the
way that researchers conduct research and
the way that people communicate
 Millions of people contribute to social media
databases everyday
 The qualitative researcher is already equipped
with many tools, and now we will learn of
another one to add to our toolkit – Social
Media Research (SMR)
(Branthwaite, A. and Patterson, S., 2011

3. What is Social Media Research
(SMR)?
 It is research using naturally occurring social media
conversations as your primary data source
 It is not online surveys, online focus groups, or online
communities
 SMR mines information from existing rich data such
as posts or blogs from Tumblr, Twitter and other online
platforms
 Variables are also identified based on the existing
data
 Researcher checks off the boxes for participants
 A Facebook status update might read, “Feeling frustrated
by the weather” and it is up to the researcher to translate
that into useful data; ie. Code that the weather is what
frustrates that individual (Branthwaite, A. and Patterson, S., 201

4. Who Uses SMR?
 SMR is used in many spheres
 It is greatly utilized in marketing so that
organizations and companies can understand
public opinion and adjust their product and/or
programs accordingly
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3GPHV5Kp_I
 It is used in social psychology to understand
human trends, beliefs, behaviours and attitudes
 It is used in every aspect of academia as a
qualitative and quantitative research tool to gain
insights on how the research topic is being
understood by the public (Branthwaite, A. and Patterson, S., 20

5. Traditional Processes in Survey
Research vs. Processes for SMR
Retrieved on March 13, 2014 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1o8WSMpQsU

6. The Advantages of Social Media
Research (SMR)
 The researcher has the ability to jump back in
time to understand a trend, reflect on an
incident or remember significant events
 Daily tracking; we can monitor day by day
what people are talking about
 Thousands of variables; you have access to
millions of people and an endless amount of
content areas

7. The Disadvantages of Social
Media Research (SMR)
 Not a lot of geo-deomgraphics available with
social media, especially in Twitter with a limited
character count per post
 If researchers aren‟t able to obtain demographic data from
social media, it is essentially „missing‟ data
 Certain topics have very little coverage on
Facebook or Pinterest, so if your research is
something that is not widely talked about, you will
have limited data
 SMR cannot measure awareness of the
issue, topic or product

8. When conducting SMR, remember
to:
 Maintain your data quality
 When putting an acronym into your search engine in
Facebook or Twitter, ensure you are searching the
appropriate acronym to obtain your full set of data
 HFCS High Fructose Corn Syrup and HFCS
Hydraflouracarbons
 Double check meaning of words during the
content analysis phase of your research
 Has your informant used the word „new‟ but really
meant to use „knew‟? Misinterpretation of language
could skew results
 Ensure that you understand and correctly interpret
the sentiment behind each emoticon
 :) means good; :( means bad; :-S means worried

9. Ethical Considerations for Social
Media Research
 Remember that social media is a personal
domain, and often times people say things
they may not have meant
 Respect for privacy is very important
 Ethical guidelines are very similar for social
media research as with traditional
research, with some additions; visit the
following sites for more info:

10. Feeling Lost?
 If you‟re feeling a little overwhelmed by all of
this information, and could use a little
help, there are a multitude of
organizations, companies and software that
can assist you!
Abbott Research & Consulting
Applied Marketing Research, Inc
Campos Inc
Doyle Research Associate

11. … Or try „Simply Measured‟ – A
Facebook Content Analysis
Software
 A free program, in exchange for your personal
statement of using this program through your own
Facebook page
 This program will analyze content of any
Facebook Fan page with „likes‟ between 50,000
and 250,000
 „Simply Measured‟ analyzes Facebook posts to
understand the content that performs the best &
the content that generates the highest
engagement
 It makes recommendations on how to increase
the numbers of „shares‟, „likes‟ and comments onhttps://freebies.simplymeasured.com/freebies/facebook-content-analysis

12. Discussion
 How do you feel about the using social
networking sites to mine data from the public?
 How do you feel, knowing that very little you
post online is confidential, and that the
majority of what you post and engage with on
social media sites is used in market research?
 Do you think that Social Media Research is a
viable form of primary data in qualitative
research?

13. References
 Branthwaite, A. and Patterson, S. (2011). The power of qualitative research in
the era of social media. Qualitative Market Research: An International
Journal, 14(4), pp.430 – 440.
 Correa, T., Hinsley, W., and Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2009). Who interacts on the
web?: the intersection of users‟ personality and social media use. Computers in
Human Behaviour, 1186, pp. 7.
 Social Media Research Foundation. (2014). Retrieved on March 10, 2014 at
http://www.smrfoundation.org/
 Zaltzman, J. and Leichliter, B. (2013). Social media-related qualitative research.
New Qualitative Research. Retrieved on March 10, 2014 at
http://www.newqualitative.org/qualitative-research/social-media-qualitative/
 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Qualitative-Data-Analysis-
Program/169827373039318
 https://freebies.simplymeasured.com/freebies/facebook-content-analysis
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1o8WSMpQsU
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3GPHV5Kp_I