Social media has grown to such an extent that it is a perfect place to conduct research. Since the number of people using social media has grown exponentially in the past decade, researchers can tap into many more subjects than they could with traditional methods. There are two best practices for using social media to conduct research that is truly important to the study: respecting users' privacy and creating the appropriate environment for research. Even if researchers use these best practices when conducting research, there are still concerns about them.
The first best practice that every research using social media should have is respect for users' privacy. As Tuten mentions, social media users commit what he calls the privacy paradox, which states that people are concerned about privacy issues even though they willingly share personal information on social media platforms (Tuten, 2018). Being mindful of this concern by the public, researchers need to be careful about accessing data that might be "off-limits" for many users. Finding the right data to access can be a difficult task for these researchers, especially because many researchers are eager to share their data collections with others (Weller, 2015). Having ease to access that data can lead researchers to forget about respecting the privacy of the users. The Cambridge Analytica scandal had detrimental effects on Facebook's reputation precisely because they did not respect users' privacy. The same outcome can be expected for researchers who research the same way. An obvious concern about respecting data privacy would be going too far and not conducting any research. Researchers need some data to do their jobs. Not using any data out of fear of having problems can also have poor results. Researchers need to do due diligence and use their judgment to decide where is that fine line. Another best practice for researching social media is creating the right environment for research.
Creating the right conditions for research is a fundamental principle of any experiment. This principle can be complicated to achieve in the case of social media. The reason for this complication is that researchers do not have control over many variables. A solution to this obstacle is a social network software system called Social Lab, which "researchers to investigate behavior in social media on an individual and group level" (Garaizar & Reips, 2014). This software includes a feature that lets researchers use bots to replicate and simulate social media users (Garaizar & Reips, 2014). The researchers can modify these bots through coding to create the perfect conditions for their research (Garaizar & Reips, 2014). Using Social Lab, researchers can control the variables and apply regular lab experiments to social media. One obvious concern with this best practice is the same reason why it is useful: the bots. These bots try to simulate human responses, which can be too complicated. Imagining a scenario in which the bots act precisely as a human would is hard. If the researchers can achieve such a system, the Science Lab is ideal for carrying out social media research.
References
Garaizar, P., & Reips, U.-D. (2014). Build Your Own Social Network Laboratory with Social Lab: A Tool for Research in Social Media. Behavior Research Methods (Online), 46(2), 430-8. doi:http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.liberty.edu/docview/1547947668?accountid=12085
Tuten, T. L. (2018). Social Media Marketing 3rd Edition. London: SAGE Publications Inc.
Weller, K. (2015). Accepting the Challenges of Social Media Research. Online Information Review, 39(3), 281-9. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1108/OIR-03-2015-0069
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