Researching social media

Farida Vis, University of Leicester.

Farida talked in depth about both YouTube and Twitter and covered a range of methodological approaches as well as the ethics of such research. The Twitter work highlighted the Reading the Riots on Twitter project and the YouTube case study looked at responses to an anti Islam film posted online by a rightwing Dutch MP (Fitna the video battle). Farida highlighted best approaches but also went into 'when things go wrong'.

Blog articles

• Reading the Riots on Twitter: who tweeted the riots?
• What do data visualisations want? 

This is the approach she takes in the forthcoming book by Sage, Researching Social Media, with Mike Thelwall. Farida Vis is Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester and lead social media researcher on the ‘Reading the Riots on Twitter’ project. She runs an MA module in Researching Social Media (#ms7042 on Twitter) and she tweets as @flygirltwo. She will speak on social media and social change at Future Everything this year.

• FutureEverything conference website

PDF slides

Download PDF slides of the presentation 'What is social media?'