{"id":10709,"date":"2016-03-21T09:43:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T09:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/?p=10709"},"modified":"2024-12-11T01:06:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T01:06:52","slug":"defining-social-media-data-stewardship-smds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/2016\/03\/21\/defining-social-media-data-stewardship-smds\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media Data Stewardship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As a research field, interdisciplinary<\/span> academic social media research is growing<\/a> at a rapid pace.<\/span><\/p>\n

For many researchers, social media data (both user- and system-generated) is\u00a0a rich source of behavioral data that can reveal\u00a0how we communicate and interact with each other online and what that might mean for our society as we continue to speed towards an increasingly computer-mediated future. That future holds many promises, but also some perils. In the aftermath of a highly debated<\/span>\u00a0Facebook mood experiment<\/a>\u00a0in 2014, questions around how industry and academic researchers\u00a0should handle and use social media data are more relevant than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, there is still a bit of a Wild West type mentality when it comes to the handling and usage of social media data. Many key questions about proper data management processes<\/strong> are still unsettled. For example, what can and can\u2019t you do with social media data? When is it appropriate for a researcher to mention the name of a person in their data set and when is it not? As part of my recent appointment as a<\/span> Canada Research Chair in Social Media Data Stewardship<\/a>, I aim to examine these and other questions in details and to conduct studies that will help to settle some of these questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what exactly is\u00a0\u2018<\/em>Social Media Data Stewardship?<\/strong>\u2019 It is a new concept\u00a0that I am proposing that touches on many of the\u00a0data management processes that social media researchers have to navigate today in relation to\u00a0collecting, storing, analysing, visualizing, publishing\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0reusing<\/em>\u00a0social\u00a0media data.\u00a0 A working definition for the concept of \u2018<\/em>Social Media Data Stewardship\u2019 is below.<\/span><\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

To understand the new concept of \u2018<\/em>Social Media Data Stewardship\u2019, we must first understand what we mean when we refer to \u2018data management processes?\u2019 These are processes\u00a0such as collection, retrieval, re-use, sharing, archiving, preservation, and disposal. They\u00a0are often combined in a recently emerged, umbrella-term –\u00a0data curation<\/strong>, or an even broader concept –\u00a0data stewardship<\/strong>. The key functions of data curation are to “<\/span>enable data discovery and retrieval, maintain its quality, add value, and provide for reuse over time<\/em><\/a>“. Data stewardship expands the focus of data curation to also include preservation and long-term data management<\/span> (Lazorchak, 2011<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Archives, Library and Information Science field has been actively tackling issues of data and information management for decades. The rapid growth of accumulating scientific research data (primarily in the \u201chard\u201d sciences) brought the questions related to the stewardship of research data to the forefront of the research community, including some recent work by<\/span>\u00a0Palmer, et.al.(2013)<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Chao, et.al.(2014)<\/a>. However, questions related to\u00a0stewardship<\/strong>\u00a0of\u00a0social media data<\/strong>\u00a0and interrelated ethical considerations and implications have largely gone unanswered and understudied.<\/span><\/p>\n

Defining Social Media Data Stewardship (SMDS)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As a way to offer a common framework\u00a0to handle\u00a0social media data and discuss data- and user-driven challenges associated with it,\u00a0I propose to\u00a0expand the original notion of data stewardship and apply it to the management of social media data. So here is a\u00a0working definition:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Social Media Data\u00a0Stewardship\u00a0(SMDS)<\/strong>\u00a0is a set of data- and user-driven principles to guide\u00a0all aspects of managing social media data including\u00a0its\u00a0collection, storage, analysis, publication,\u00a0reuse, sharing and preservation.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Social Media Data<\/strong> + Data Stewardship =\u00a0Social Media Data <\/strong>Stewardship<\/strong>\u00a0–\u00a0 processes related to all aspects of managing social media data including<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In order to study SMDS, we at the Social Media Lab are launching a new 5-year initiative which goal is to develop a new\u00a0social media data stewardship<\/em>\u00a0framework to inform future development of digital research infrastructure. As SMDS is a\u00a0multi-faceted notion, it would require\u00a0studying different stakeholders and their practices to get a full picture:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Data consumers (researchers, policy and decision makers working in the private and public sectors);<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Data producers (social media users);<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Data intermediaries (social media platforms).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Table 1 below outlines some of the initial research questions and dimensions that we plan to study as part of this initiative. Our hope is that a resulting SMDS framework will allow both data consumers and producers to unlock the full potential of social media data while still considering ethical implications of using available data.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As a research field, interdisciplinary academic social media research is growing at a rapid pace. For many researchers, social media data (both user- and system-generated) is\u00a0a rich source of behavioral data that can reveal\u00a0how we communicate and interact with each other online and what that might mean for our society as we continue to speed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":10715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,489,37,265,264],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic","category-org-soc-med-use","category-politics","category-research","category-web-apps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10709"}],"version-history":[{"count":45,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21822,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10709\/revisions\/21822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}