The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods

Dr. Anabel Quan-Haase (Ph.D., University of Toronto) is a Full Professor of Sociology and Information and Media Studies at Western University and the Rogers Chair in Studies in Journalism and Information Technology. She is the author of Technology and Society (Oxford University Press, 2020), co-author of Real-Life Sociology (Oxford University Press, 2021), co-editor of the Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (Sage, 2022), and co-editor of the Handbook of Computational Social Science (Routledge, 2022). Dr. Quan-Haase has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. She is past chair of the Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association and past president of the Canadian Association for Information Science. Through her policy work she has cooperated with the Benton Foundation, Partnership for Progress on the Digital Divide, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Canada’s Digital Policy Forum.   Luke Sloan is Professor and Deputy Director of the Social Data Science Lab and reader at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. His research focuses on understanding what social media can tell us about the social world, with a particular emphasis on data linkage and ethics.

• Chapter 1: Introduction - Anabel Quan-Haase & Luke SloanPart 1: Conceptualising and Designing Social Media ResearchChapter 2: Defining Social Media and Asking Social Media Research Questions: How Well Does the Swiss Army Knife Metaphor Apply? - Charlotte Nau, Anabel Quan-Haase, & Lori McCay-PeetChapter 3: Before Methods: Social Media Research Considerations - Bree McEwan & Jesse FoxChapter 4: Building Social Media Interdisciplinary Research Teams across Academia, Industry, and Community: Motivations, Challenges, and Policy Frameworks - Anabel Quan-Haase, Riley McLaughlin, & Lori McCay-PeetChapter 5: Key Consideration in the Interpretation of Digital Trace Data - Andrew D. Nevin, Yimin Chen, Shuzhe Yang, & Anabel Quan-HaaseChapter 6: Who Uses Social Media? - Grant BlankChapter 7: Representativeness and Bias in Social Media Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Sampling - William Hollingshead, Anabel Quan-Haase, & Grant BlankPart 2: Collecting DataChapter 8: Sourcing Data from Social Media via APIs - Dietmar JanetzkoChapter 9: Using Social Media in Data Collection: Designing Studies with the Qualitative E-Research Framework - Janet SalmonsChapter 10: Understanding Individual Web Browsing: Social Media Use in Context - Ericka Menchen-Trevino & Chris J. KarrChapter 11: Gathering Behavioural Data from User-Provided Social Media Downloads - Jazmin A. Reyes-Portillo, Chris J. Karr, & Marya E. CordenPart 3: Qualitative Approaches to Social Media DataChapter 12: Small Data, Thick Data: Data Thickening Strategies for Social Media Research - Guillaume Latzko-Toth, Claudine Bonneau, & Melanie MilletteChapter 13: Scaling Up Qualitative Research Methods with Natural Language Processing Tools: The Case-Study of the Columbia′s 2018 Presidential Election in Twitter - Erin Huner & Juan Luis SuárezChapter 14: The Visual in Social Media: Understanding Visual Objects, Mobilities, and Practices - Martin HandChapter 15: Twitter as Method: Using Twitter as a Tool to Conduct Ethnographic Research - Bonnie StewartChapter 16: Netnography - An Approach to Ethnography in the Digital Age - Alex Fenton & Keith ParryChapter 17: Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Social Media Data: Tools and Techniques - Jaigris Hodson & Laura M. LefevreChapter 18: Small Stories Research: A Narrative Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Media - Alexandra GeorgakopoulouPart 4: Quantitative Approaches to Social Media DataChapter 19: Geospatial Analysis - Olga Buchel & Diane Rasmussen PenningtonChapter 20: Predictive Analytics with Social Media Data - Niels Buus Lassen, Lisbeth la Cour, & Ravi VatrapuChapter 21: Machine Learning and Neural Network Language Models for Sentiment Analysis - John McLevey & Tyler CrickChapter 22: The Multi-Scalar Complexities of Analysing the City through Social Media Data - Pablo Marti & Leticia Serrano-EstradaChapter 23: Multiscale Functional Communities - Olga Buchel & Leila HedayatifarPart 5: Diverse Approaches to Social Media DataChapter 24: Innovative Social Location-Aware Services for Mobile Phones - Bernhard Klein & Ulf-Dietrich ReipsChapter 25: The Good, the Bad and the How-To of Analyzing Social Media Data - Frauke ZellerChapter 26: Situating Location Data in Social Media Research - Darryl PieberChapter 27: Content Verification for Social Media: From Deception Detection to Automated Fact-Checking - Victoria L. RubinPart 6: Research & Analytical ToolsChapter 28: COSMOS 2.0: The Journey of Developing a Social Analytic Tool - Mohamed Mostafa & Arron CullenChapter 29: Social Lab: An ′Open Source Facebook′ - Ulf-Dietrich Reips & Pablo GaraizarChapter 30: A Python Tutorial for Social Scientists: Using the YouTube API and Advanced Supervised Text Classification Methods to Detect COVID-19 Toxic (Misinformation) Comments on YouTube - Morteza Shahrezaye, Fabienne Marco, Joana Bayraktar, & Simon HegelichChapter 31: R for Social Media Analysis - Saurabh Dhawan & Simon HegelichChapter 32: Using Netlytic to Analyze Twitter Conversation about the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine - Anatoliy Gruzd, Philip Mai, & Andrea KampenChapter 33: Computational Temporal Thematic Analysis of Social Media Data - Danial AngusChapter 34: NodeXL – Twitter Social Media Network Insights in Just a Few Clicks - Wasim Ahmed, Harald Meier, & Marc SmithChapter 35: Studying Anti-Social Behaviour on Reddit with Communalytic - Anatoliy Gruzd, Philip Mai, & Zahra VahediChapter 36: Sentiment Analysis - Mike ThelwallPart 7: Social Media PlatformsChapter 37: Coding Twitter Data Using Qualitative and Computational Methods: A Mixed Methods Framework - Dhiraj MurthyChapter 38: The Reddit Data Analysis Pipeline for Researchers - Yadira Lizama-Mué & Juan Luis SuárezChapter 39: Turning to Alternative Social Media - Gordon GowChapter 40: Instagram Revisited - Linnea Laestadius & Alice WittChapter 41: WeChat - Jimman Zhang & Anabel Quan-HaaseChapter 42: Collecting and Analyzing Weibo Data: A Roadmap for Social Research - Zhifan Luo & Muyang LiChapter 43: Social Media for Joint Experimental, Survey, and Observational Data Collection: The case of VKontakte (VK) - Olessia KoltsovaChapter 44: Researching YouTube: Methods, Tools, and Analytics - M. Laeeq Khan & Aqdas MalikChapter 45: Researching TikTok: Themes, Methods, and Future Directions - Alex MiltsovPart 8: Privacy, Ethics and InequalitiesChapter 46: Inequalities in Social Media Use and their Implications for Digital Methods Research - Christoph LutzChapter 47: Linking Twitter and Survey Data: Gaining Consent, Making the Link, and Maintaining Data Security - Luke Sloan, Tarek Al Baghal, & Curtis JessopChapter 48: Ethics of Using Social Media Data in Research: Users’ Views - Jenna Jacobson & Irina GoreaChapter 49: Privacy, Consent, and Confidentiality in Social Media Research - Jacquie Burkell, Priscilla M. Regan, & Valerie Steeves