Modes of Analysis for Studying Social Media?

In studying social media technologies, it is easy to become lost in the vast number and variety of communication outlets that fall under the ‘social media’ umbrella.  With no geographic hub and no set modes of interaction, defining the exact parameters of ‘social media’ can be taxing.  For this reason, I agree with Dr. Beer in highlighting the necessity of classification in social media technologies – in order to begin to understand a social networking site, we must narrowly define its contents as to stray away from the broad implications of ‘social media,’ or in Beer’s words, with “rapid cultural shifts and the dynamic and disjointed nature of much contemporary online culture there is a pressing need to classify in order to work toward a more descriptive analysis” (518).  Beer elaborates on his ideal means of studying social media by stating that in order to fully understand SNS, we must examine the daily proceedings of the average SNSer while paying an unexpectedly close regard to the capitalist aspects of the SNS, or the “information about us [that] is routinely harvested and used to inform” – the third party, capitalist interests that accompany social networking sites (526). 

 

By putting Beer’s “Response to danah boyd & Nicole Ellison” in conversation with another example of boyd’s research (along with Scott Golder and Gild Lotan), “Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter,” we can further examine Beer’s guidelines for studying social networking sites by working with a single site: Twitter.  Beer would commend the author trio for explicitly defining the qualities of Twitter aside from the broad generalizations of SNS – its background, conventions, constructions and implications of a retweet, and so on, but, as the document focuses primarily on the sole act of “retweeting” in a social sense rather than the website’s means for profit, the only mention of capitalism is the “worst” purpose of a retweet: “pandering for social capital” (6).

 

Although I support Beer’s idea in that an SNS should be broken down and defined by a researcher in order to further his or her understanding, these social networking technologies are endlessly advancing and culture’s responses are endlessly evolving so that it seems nearly impossible to define a set-in-stone way to ‘properly’ study social media.  Beer stresses the importance of noting the capitalist, non-SNSers making use of the information on social networking sites, but that is a development that has come with the rise in SNS’s rise in popularity.  As the popularity of SNS continues to rise, the future is indefinable and unpredictable, and research methods must perhaps continue to grow and morph along with social media technologies.

 

Jen Lewis