HELPING PEOPLE'S

By  Janet Salmons, PhD  #einterview and www.vision2lead.com The New Social Media, New Social Science network is dedicated to an exploration of whether and how social science researchers should embrace social media. But what is “social media”? I considered this need for definition in an NSMNSS post. Subsequently we convened a Tweetchat and also offered the opportunity for input through a questionnaire. After reviewing the dialogue, comments and materials referenced, a more nuanced definition of social media is taking shape. Helen Mara pointed to the word “social” as key in describing the scope of synchronous or asynchronous conversation possible. "Social" may refer to posts that are public (can be read by anyone) or private (exchange between people in defined group). Antonella Esposito suggested that social media refers to a “complex ecology, not just specific tools.” Some of the comments provide an almost poetic view: Chareen Snelson suggested that “Social media might be tho...

By Amy Aisha Brown, PhD Blogger After reading Dr Janet Salmons’s last post ( Defining our terms: What is “social media”? ), I was inspired to think about what the term means to me but coming up with a definition is not that easy. Is social media defining platforms, the affordances of platforms, something else? Is it the online factor? Because it is participatory? How far does the label extend? I am excited about the #NSMNSS tweetchat we are going to have on 5 December (details here ) where we can discuss some of these questions and think about what social media means to us as a group, but after failing to find a personal definition for this potentially all-encompassing term, I thought a better approach might be for me to think about what social media means or brings to my doctoral research . On a basic level I could say, “social media is data”. That is, I use Twitter as my way into investigating how the English language in Japan is talked about. This is not a common approach in studies...

In this post  Chareen Snelson, Ed.D. considers YouTube as Social Media... Defining Social Media in General The discussion surrounding the definition of “social media” brings to light just how challenging it can be to precisely define something that we think we understand until we try to explain it. For many of us, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube spring to mind during discussions of social media. However, these are specific manifestations of a broader phenomena. From my perspective, social media represents a set of technologies that allow people to share content and make connections with others online. Although my perspective may capture the essence of what I think social media is, it may or may not be in agreement with what others think. One way to explore this is with a simple search phrase in Google using, “define: social media.” The results of this search reveal a plethora of definitions. One of the simplest definitions for social media shown as a dictionary entry near the top of ...

Sometimes we communicate by using a few words as a kind of shorthand for big ideas: we know what we mean. Or at least we assume we have a common conception for what we mean when we use certain words, based perhaps on a shared experience of the phenomenon. But when we try to enlarge the conversation and explain it to someone else with whom we do not share experiences or frames of reference, we must be more precise. I believe we are at such a point with some of the words we use in the NSMNSS project. To include and engage others beyond the early adopters and true believers of online research, we may need to build a common language. As a case in point, last spring NSMNSS conducted a questionnaire about ethical issues in social media research. Using the narrative option many respondents posted concerns about what they perceived as a lack of understanding of online research generally at their institutions and out-of-date guidance from their faculty, dissertation supervisors and institutions...