Social media data is of great value to researchers. What people say on platforms such as Twitter can tell us a great deal about society’s attitudes. It can also allow us to capture reactions to political events in the moment. However, since the Cambridge Analytica scandal – which involved data from millions of Facebook users being mined and used for political ads to sway the 2016 US presidential election – people are more sceptical of how their data is used.
For the last two years the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) has hosted an event at Twitter UK as part of the Festival of Social Science, run by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
This year the event will focus on how social media data can be used in research that benefits society, as well as what ethical considerations there are in this field. It will also look at how things have changed since last year in this incredibly fast-moving and topical field. Eventbrite
I’m featured on the @NatCen ‘Twitter Moment’
What Can Social Media Tell Us About Society?
And my collected tweets (37) are here: