Category: Random Blog Posts

Social Media Analytics Technologies, Tactics, and Values: A Project Summary

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I started this project hoping to understand how social media data is harvested, processed, analyzed, and used for marketing and political communications. While compiling this bibliography I read a lot more research than I could include, and almost none of it reflected any consideration of how it might affect human beings, communities, politics, or the natural world. It should be expected that other people will insert their own values into applications of this technology, for good or ill. And that's exactly what's happening.

An Overabundance of Research, Data, and Tools

social network, communication in the global computer networks. silhouette of a human head with an interface icons

We've arrived at the inevitable point of imperfection. I started out looking for authoritative resources on how social media data is harvested, processed, and used in commercial and political communication campaigns, and I sure did find them. The problem is this realm is changing so fast, many of these sources are out of date. Regardless, this research project must come to an end on May 11th when I turn in my IS 452 final project. My proposed annotated bibliography has become a series of marginal blog posts. But the fight continues.