Social Media: A Relevant Synergy for Research in the Humanities

The electronic, networked and interactive nature of social media has significant impact on research, opening up new possibilities for gathering and analysing data. This paper argues that the techniques by which users interact with data in social media, particularly categorisation and semantic tagging, can be applied to a broad range of humanities research methodologies using similar interfaces to those of social media platforms. This study combines a general review of possibilities generated by social media data and human subjects with an exploratory assessment of the feasibility of social media mechanisms. It uses both qualitative and quantitative techniques to generate, gather, analyse and interpret data from both social media and human subjects. Analysis of the data gathered shows a high record of research related activities online even as the human subjects attests to using social media for research. However, caution is needed in interpreting the results of social media data, or generalizing from these data to the public at large. This study recommends that all social media data be benchmarked against other data sources as most indicators developed through social media processes can be difficult to interpret in isolation.

Keywords: Social Media, Research, Humanities, Social Mention, Social-Searcher.