Why study social media? Understanding and using digital methods for social science research on Twitter & YouTube

This workshop has been organised by the Data, Communication and New Technologies (DCT) Pathway and is open to all ESRC and non-ESRC funded PhD and MA Social Research students within the WRDTP’s seven partner universities. Whilst this workshop is aimed at DCT Pathway students, PGRs from all seven interdisciplinary Pathways are welcome to attend. This workshop will take place at the University of Sheffield but will incorporate a hybrid component for those unable to attend in person. Lunch will be provided.

The workshop will develop through three taught sessions, combining conceptual discussions and practical tasks.

Session 1: Why study social media?

We will introduce the rationale for studying social media in the context of social science research. We will discuss the principles of so-called “digital methods” (Rogers, 2019) and position these methods vis-a-vis qualitative and quantitative research. We will then situate the use of traditional social network analysis techniques and mapping within these methods and discuss how they can be used to make sense of and visualise relationships developing on social media, for instance among users or topics.

Session 2: Twitter research 

In this session we will discuss the implications of API access to data by focusing on Twitter APIs. Students will be introduced to Twitter data collection (with TAGS) and social network analysis (with Gephi) to investigate retweet networks. They will be able to experiment with these tools and share their work at the end of the session.

Session 3: YouTube research

In this session we will discuss the YouTube API and its strengths and limitations. Students will be introduced to YouTube data collection (with the YouTube Data Tools) and social network analysis (with Gephi) to study video recommendation systems on the platform. They will be able to experiment with these tools and share their work at the end of the session.

Those attending the event online will not be able to participate in the practical tasks but will be able to independently access all the material made available for these tasks.