Call for speakers: An introduction to tools for social media research

Tuesday 11th October 2016
Location: Friends House, London NW1 2BJ

Following the success of March’s #SoMeEthics conference, we’ve been discussing and planning our next event. We’re pleased to be teaming up with one of our network affiliates, the Social Research Association (www.the-sra.org.uk) for a one-day session on ‘An introduction to tools for social media research’.

We’re looking for around 8 speakers, between them covering a mix of different tools, a range of social media platforms, and different ‘types’ of social media analysis – qualitative or quantitative, images or text, big or small data, networks, geography, etc. If we receive lots if interest and suggestions, we may also look into further events in the future with different focuses.
As with all our events, our goal is to make it accessible: we’re particularly looking for users of social media research tools to talk about how they have used those tools in their research, and be up-front about any strengths, but also any weaknesses. We’d also like to focus on free to use software, but in all of this we’ll be judging on a case-by-case basis.
In terms of the ‘level’, this should very much be an ‘introduction to…’ or ‘demonstration of…’ – we’re not looking at running an in-depth training session, but want to demonstrate, in a practical way, some of the things that are possible with social media research to those that may be new to the methodology.

Are you interested in presenting?
If you’re interested in presenting, or if you have any suggestions of what you might like to see discussed, please do get in touch with us at nsmnss@natcen.ac.uk by 31st July. Let us know which research tool(s) you would like to present on, the social media platform(s) they are compatible with, and the aspect(s) of research you would like to demonstrate. We’d also like to know whether or not the tools are free-to-use, your current organisational affiliation, and if relevant, any research, or other, context you’ll be presenting within.

This event is being set up and run by the network and SRA. We want to keep the event accessible and ticket prices reasonable, but need to cover the costs of the venue hire/refreshments, so we cannot pay presenters – however there will be 1 free place per presentation, and we will be able to cover reasonable ‘within UK’ public transport travel expenses.

The #NSMNSS team