iSchool Research Symposium: Libby Hemphill
"How should we save social media data?"
Social media data offer researchers new opportunities to leverage those data for their work in broad areas such as public opinion, digital culture, labor trends, and public health. The success of efforts to save social media data for reuse by researchers will depend on aligning data management and archiving practices with evolving norms around the capture, use, sharing, and security of datasets containing this new type of data.
Dr. Hemphill will present results from a survey of researchers who use social media data and explain how established practices for managing and preserving data should adapt to new demands from social media data. This presentation will explain researchers’ data management practices, how they differ from management of more conventional data types, and the implications for creating and maintaining stable archives for these resources. Dr. Hemphill will discuss the similarities and differences between social media data and other types of social science research data, including other types of “found” data, and will introduce a prototype social media archive.