This document discusses social media as a domain for CSCW research. It outlines that social media has become an important venue for collaborative practices. While research approaches vary, CSCW is uniquely positioned to study social media through established lenses like social networks, communication, and practices. Examples of research topics involving social media are discussed, such as disaster response and political movements. Challenges include the diverse landscape of social media and issues of data collection. The road ahead involves consolidating CSCW's unique perspective on studying collaborative activities through social media.

1. Social Media: A complex domain
for CSCW Enquiry
Luigina Ciolfi
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
EUSSET International Summer School on CSCW
Como, August 2015

2. Outline
• Social Media and CSCW
• Definition of Social Media: why should CSCW
care?
• Approaches to Social Media research
• Examples of research contributions
• Issues and Challenges
• Links to other disciplines: what is unique about
CSCW studying social media?
• The road ahead

3. To Warm-Up
• How many of you are doing research that
features social media in some way?

4. To Warm-Up
• How many of you are doing research that
features social media in some way?
• Can you say in ten words what it is about?

5. Social Media and CSCW
• Broad topic and field
• Gained strong relevance for/attention from
CSCW in the past decade
• Variegated landscape – topics, conceptual
approaches, methodologies, etc.

6. Definition of Social Media
• Social media in itself is a broad “umbrella term”
• Vast array of platforms, tools and related communities that
focus on social/cooperative interactions among people
• Initially enabled by Web 2.0 technology, i.e.: features of
“discussion”, “sharing”, “commenting”
• Knowledge sourcing platforms: Tripadvisor, Goodreads,
Quora, etc.
• Participant knowledge repositories: Wikis, blogs,
(established ‘brands’ such as Wikipedia, Flickr, etc.)
• Platforms dedicated explicitly to social interactions/social
connections in various forms and through various
mechanisms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Path,
Foursquare, LinkedIn, etc.

7. Why Should CSCW Care?

8. Why Should CSCW Care?
- Nowadays cooperative practices often occur
through social media

9. Why Should CSCW Care?
- Nowadays cooperative practices often occur
through social media
- Social media has enabled new forms of
social/collaborative practices

10. Why Should CSCW Care?
- Nowadays cooperative practices often occur
through social media
- Social media has enabled new forms of
social/collaborative practices
- Previous knowledge and previously developed
concepts adapted to a young domain

11. Why Should CSCW Care?
- Nowadays cooperative practices often occur
through social media
- Social media has enabled new forms of
social/collaborative practices
- Previous knowledge and previously developed
concepts adapted to a young domain
- Mechanisms of social interaction and
communication that are already known happen in
new forms on social media (reputation
management; disclosure; trust; impression
management; etc.)

12. Social Media and CSCW
• Research on social media per se…

13. Social Media and CSCW
• Research on social media per se…
• …On certain practices/phenomena that
involve social media;

14. Social Media and CSCW
• Research on social media per se…
• …On certain practices/phenomena that
involve social media;
• …On theoretical contributions - social media
as a domain to verify/discuss/improve theory

15. Social Media and CSCW
• Research on social media per se…
• …On certain practices/phenomena that
involve social media;
• …On theoretical contributions - social media
as a domain to verify/discuss/improve theory
• Very difficult to define one way of doing CSCW
research about social media, either
conceptually or methodologically

16. Social Media and CSCW
• Open question: we study what happens on
Facebook or we study what happens,
including when it is on Facebook?
• E.g. studying political movements, these days
social media is an important aspect of them.

17. Approaches to Social Media Research
in CSCW
Methodological frames
• Broad distinctions, e.g. Qualitative vs. Quantitative
• Finer distinctions, such as techniques used in mixed
method studies, etc.
• …
Analytical frames
• Social network analysis
• Communication lens; CMC
• Practice lens
• …

18. Approaches to Social Media Research
in CSCW
Established topics/issues of lively CSCW
research. Some examples:
• Disaster and crisis management and recovery
• Health/Wellbeing
• Political movements and civic action
• Urban informatics/Urban development
• Technology use in developing countries
• Peer production

19. Examples of International Research
Kate Starbird & Leysia Palen (2011),
‘“Voluntweeters”: Self Organising of Digital
Volunteers in Times of Crisis’, CHI 2011, ACM.

20. Examples of International Research
Themed Bibliography:
Studying the medium (Facebook, Wikiwork, Pinterest)
Themes (politics and social movements; the developing
world; crises and disasters; community development)
Application and revisiting of existing concepts
Social Network Analysis studies
Practice focus
Challenges and tools for studying social media
Theory and Models

21. Issues and Challenges
Variegated landscape: does it exist a “CSCW
way” of studying social media?
Different conceptual
understandings/Frameworks
Big data/Data harvesting: source of large
datasets or?
Social Media vs. the rest of the world

22. Links to other disciplines
Close neighbours (e.g. HCI; Information Systems)
Communication and Media Studies
Cultural Studies
Organisational Science
Psychology
…
Software Engineering
Recommender Systems
…

23. The Road Ahead
• Practice lens: back to people?
• From interactions to activities
• Consolidate the unique CSCW perspective and
contributions to research on social media

24. To Be Continued…
• You can email me (l.ciolfi@shu.ac.uk)
• Tutorial this afternoon
• I will share the bibliography with you: how
about making it a collaborative exercise?