Developing a Social Media Archive at ICPSR

Abstract

Social media are implicated in many of contemporary society's most pressing issues, from influencing public opinion, to organizing social movements, and identifying economic trends. Increasing the capacity of researchers to understand the dynamics of such social, behavioral and economic phenomena will depend on reliable, curated, discoverable and accessible social media data. To that end, ICPSR will develop a new archive of curated datasets, workflows, and code for use by social science researchers for the empirical analysis of social media platforms, content, and user behavior. The goal is to provide a user-friendly, large-scale, next-generation data resource for researchers conducting data-intensive research using data from social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram. In our presentation, we will explain SOMAR's goals and structure and discuss opportunities for collaboration.