Extracting Social Science Insights from Social Media

• Activity Number: 390
• Type: Roundtables
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 12:30 PM to 1:50 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Martin Barron*+
• Companies: NORC At the University of Chicago
• Keywords: social media ; Web 2.0 ; Twitter ; Facebook ; Weblogs

Abstract

Social Media---broadly defined as electronic communication that allows people to create, share, and comment on content among themselves in virtual networks---represents a growing pool of raw data. It represents what Bob Groves termed "organic data"---data that arises as a naturally occurring product (or byproduct) of other actions.

Researchers have already begun mining this data---from blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other sources---to glean insights on a wide variety of social science topics. Social media has been used to track flu rates, drug intake, electoral preference, consumer prices.

Although researchers have begun extracting insights from social media, numerous questions remain about the reliability and validity of this data, particularly for drawing inferences to broader populations. This roundtable will discuss the growing use of social media for social statistics. We'll explore the potential of this data, its drawbacks and limitations, exemplars of this type of research, and the statistical and methodological research necessary to continue advancing the use of social media data for social science statistics.