Big Questions for Social Media Big Data: Representativeness, Validity and Other Methodological Pitfalls

Understand

Large-scale databases of human activity in social media have captured scientific and policy attention, producing a flood of research and discussion.

• This paper considers methodological and conceptual challenges for this emergent field, with special attention to the validity and representativeness of social media big data analyses.
• Persistent issues include the over-emphasis of a single platform, Twitter, sampling biases arising from selection by hashtags, and vague and unrepresentative sampling frames.
• The socio-cultural complexity of user behavior aimed at algorithmic invisibility (such as subtweeting, mock-retweeting, use of "screen captures" for text, etc.) further complicate interpretation of big data social media.