INF6024   Researching Social Media   (15 credits)

Description

The module will examine the key theoretical frameworks and methods used in social media studies. Students will explore the following questions: 1) What can be learnt about society by studying social media? 2) How should researchers construct ethical stances for researching sites such as Facebook and Twitter? 3) What are the traditional and digital research methods and tools that can be applied to conduct research on social media? 4) What are the strengths and weaknesses of these methods? The primary focus of the module is on designing social media research projects rather than conducting them. Nevertheless, there will be opportunities to learn and practice relevant analysis skills. It is not a programming module but some of the topics involve the use of software and there will be the chance to write small programs for related tasks.

Reading List