Analysis of social media data: An introduction to characteristics and chronological process

Abstract

A means toward understanding the problems facing today’s social scientists is through the analysis of social media data. This analysis is approached by forecasting and analyzing phenomena within social media generated big data. The approach demands interdisciplinary teamwork between the data sciences and other disciplines. The aforementioned is still an emerging discourse, thereby demanding the ongoing devotion of researchers in allied disciplines. This chapter seeks to describe the characteristics, elements, and the chronological process of analyzing social media data from a mass communication scholar’s perspective. It aims to present the chronological process in which a researcher deals with social media data in the form of case studies, and how that researcher deals with the social data regarding the study’s posed question.