Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research

Craig A. Hill, Elizabeth Dean, Joe Murphy

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118594988
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Probability & Statistics
• Index: Mathematics

Provides the knowledge and tools needed for the future of survey research

The survey research discipline faces unprecedented challenges, such as falling response rates, inadequate sampling frames, and antiquated approaches and tools. Addressing this changing landscape, Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research introduces readers to a multitude of new techniques in data collection in one of the fastest developing areas of survey research.

The book is organized around the central idea of a "sociality hierarchy" in social media interactions, comprised of three levels: broadcast, conversational, and community based. Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research offers balanced coverage of the theory and practice of traditional survey research, while providing a conceptual framework for the opportunities social media platforms allow. Demonstrating varying perspectives and approaches to working with social media, the book features:

• New ways to approach data collection using platforms such as Facebook and Twitter
• Alternate methods for reaching out to interview subjects
• Design features that encourage participation with engaging, interactive surveys

Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research is an important resource for survey researchers, market researchers, and practitioners who collect and analyze data in order to identify trends and draw reliable conclusions in the areas of business, sociology, psychology, and population studies. The book is also a useful text for upper-undergraduate and graduate-level courses on survey methodology and market research.

CHAPTER 1

Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research

Joe Murphy, Craig A. Hill, and Elizabeth Dean,

RTI International

As survey researchers, we have long been concerned about the future of survey research. Beset by problems not of its own making, the survey research discipline faces unprecedented challenges because of declining data quality—stemming from, for example, falling response rates, inadequate sampling frames, and antiquated approaches and tools. Conducting a survey is, at its core, a social interaction between a researcher and a (potential) respondent—a “conversation with a purpose.” The current pace of technological change—and the way people communicate with one another—presages the upheaval of survey research as we know it.

Thus, survey researchers should be—must be—searching for improvements to the way their research is conducted. Survey researchers should be—must be—constantly scanning the landscape of technological and social change, looking for new methods and tools to employ. In this spirit, we have been, somewhat jealously, watching the explosion of social media.

In this book, we introduce the concept of the sociality hierarchy; that is, three “levels” of sociality inherent in the current (and future) state of person-to-person interactions using computing devices: (1) broadcast, (2) conversational, and (3) community. Survey researchers should recognize these levels when attempting to apply new social media tools to survey research. This book presents examples of how this application can be done and, perhaps more importantly, how survey researchers should think about applying these tools in the future as a complement to traditional survey research.

In this first chapter, we discuss the advent of social media in its many and varied forms, and we define it from the perspective of a survey researcher. We also show why survey researchers should be interested in, and vigilant about, social media. We introduce the concept of the sociality hierarchy for social media and show examples of each level or category.

Throughout the rest of the book, we explain (and show), at a more practical level, how survey researchers can use the data generated by social media at each level of the sociality hierarchy. Finally, we suggest particular vectors on which survey researchers might find themselves with regard to the use of social media data and tools as we move inexorably into the future.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

Millions of people have joined networks like Facebook and Twitter and have incorporated them into their daily lives, and at least partially as a result, communications between individuals and groups have changed in a fundamental way. Every day, billions of transactions occur over electronic systems, and within this stream are data on individuals' behaviors, attitudes, and opinions. Such data are of keen interest to those conducting survey research because they provide precisely the types of information we seek when conducting a survey.

The term social media has become ubiquitous. But what is social media? The term social suggests two-way interactions between people, which may be classified as one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many. Media, or tools that store and deliver information, typically include materials that deliver text, images, or sound, i.e., mass media like books and magazines, television, film, radio, and personal media like mail and telephone.

Media can be further delineated into analog media, which contain data in a continuous signal or physical format, and digital media, which store information in a binary system of ones and zeros. The important distinction for our purposes is that digital media are typically stored or transmitted through computers or digital devices and can be disseminated via the Internet (aka the web).

The term social media most commonly refers to web-based technologies for communication and sharing over the Internet. There is no single agreed-upon definition of social media, but Scott and Jacka (2011, page 5) contend that social media “is the set of web-based broadcast technologies that enable the democratization of content, giving people the ability to emerge from consumers of content to publishers.” Social media involves the intensive use of electronic media for people in contact through online communities (Toral et al., 2009), but no agreed-upon definition exists for the concept of “online community” either (De Souza & Preece, 2004).

We propose a specific working definition of social media for the purposes of survey research: Social media is the collection of websites and web-based systems that allow for mass interaction, conversation, and sharing among members of a network. In this definition, social media has four defining characteristics: user-generated content, community, rapid distribution, and open, two-way dialogue (Health Research Institute, 2012).

Social media must be distinguished from other similar terms that may refer more to the technological or structural aspects of online systems. For instance, the web, built on the infrastructure of the Internet, contains myriad sites that are not part of the social media construct. These sites include, for instance, information resources without an interactive, discussion, or sharing component. Such resources typify web 1.0, which describes resources that allow users to view and consume information from the web but without necessarily sharing or interacting with the contents (Krishnamurthy & Cormode, 2008). Web 2.0, however, refers to sites with user-generated content such as videos, music, blog text, and photos (Anderson, 2007). Web 2.0 has allowed users to interact with the web and with other users and has permitted the consumer to become the creator of content (Asberg, 2009). Web 2.0 has been used as an umbrella term for web-enabled applications built around user-generated or user-manipulated content (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2011). Ravenscroft (2009) considers web 2.0 to be the “social and participative web” that includes tools emphasizing social networking (e.g., Facebook, Bebo, and LinkedIn), media sharing (e.g., MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr) and virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life).

The distinction between social media and web 2.0 can be rather nebulous, but Figure 1.1 shows how social media fit into the evolution of popular media and technology. The figure presents analog, digital, web 1.0, and web 2.0 media types progressing over time from left to right. Analog media are listed with arrows connecting them to digital and web media that have evolved from or supplanted them. Diamonds represent media that have traditionally been employed for survey research including the following:

• Mail, used for delivering paper-and-pencil surveys
• Telephone, used for conducting survey interviews
• Digital audio, such as WAV files, used for recording interviews for verification and data quality purposes (Biemer et al., 2000)
• E-mail and homepages (now more commonly referred to as webpages) for web surveys, notifications, and panel maintenance
• Market research online communities, which are private social networks and websites to conduct qualitative marketing research with a selected community of members.

Figure 1.1 Media types.

Media represented by hexagons in Figure 1.1 hold potential for survey research innovation moving forward and are, thus, the focus of this book. In this book, we present our research on these new modes and methods such as online games, multiply massive online games, and virtual worlds (Chapters 5, 6, 10, and 11); social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter (Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 9); smartphone-enabled media like mobile apps for survey data collection (Chapter 7); and web 2.0-enabled research resources such as crowdsourcing (Chapter 8).

The dotted line in Figure 1.1 indicates which media we consider social media for the purposes of this book. It encompasses web 2.0 media but also includes some typically classified under web 1.0 that allow for user-generated content, rapid distribution, or open, two-way dialogue.

SOCIAL MEDIA ORIGINS

Consonant with our definition of social media as web-based, most social media originated—were born—in the 1990s. The explosion in popularity of the Internet during this time eventually led to its steady penetration into many aspects of life (Leberknight et al., 2012). Between 1993 and 1995, Internet service providers (ISPs) began offering access in most major U.S. cities (Scott & Jacka, 2011). America Online (AOL) became a popular service by mailing access discs directly to consumers, which allowed them to try (and subscribe to) the Internet. Once on the Internet, users could participate in social activities such as sharing their opinions broadly through individual homepages, participating in bulletin board discussions, and engaging in other activities. Widespread use of social media and web 2.0, though, did not proliferate until the 2000s. With the launch of MySpace in 2003, users had the means to control and share media easily on their own personal pages and comment on the contents of their contacts' pages. Scott and Jacka (2011, page 14) argue that “if 2000–2004 was about building platforms and tools, 2005–2009 could be defined as the period of user adoption and the remarkable change in how users connect, converse, and build relationships.” By 2006, YouTube and Twitter had launched, and Facebook cracked the 10-million user mark.

Since 2006, the function of the web has moved rapidly in the direction of user-driven technologies such as blogs, social networks, and video-sharing platforms (Smith, 2009). This user-generated content is becoming more prevalent across the web, with most sites now allowing users to publish opinions, share content, and connect with other users.

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND PLATFORMS

Social media use has skyrocketed in the last several years. Participation in social networking sites ballooned from 5% of all adults in 2005 to 50% in 2011. Facebook, in particular, grew from 5 million users in 2005 to more than 900 million in 2012. Twitter continues its amazing growth with nearly 500,000 new accounts created per day (Health Research Institute, 2012).

Web 2.0 tools and technologies in particular have allowed collaboration and communication across boundaries (Schutte, 2009). At the core of web 2.0 are social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and many others facilitating social sharing to an unprecedented extent. These sites can be defined as social network sites or social network services—“web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (boyd & Ellison, 2007, page 211). On social network sites, individual users share knowledge, pose and solve problems, seek and offer advice, tell stories, and debate issues of interest (Toral et al., 2009). boyd and Ellison differentiate social network sites from networking as the latter term implies that relationships are being initiated between strangers. Social networking sites make networking possible, but it is not their primary function nor is it what makes them distinct from other forms of computer-mediated communication. The defining quality of social network sites, according to boyd and Ellison, page 211, is that they “enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks.”

Social networking sites host online communities of people who share interests and provide ways for users to interact, including e-mail and instant messaging services (Shin, 2010). Social network sites allow users to create profile pages with personal information, establish “friends” or contacts, and communicate with other users (boyd & Ellison, 2007). On popular sites like Facebook, users communicate via private messages or public comments posted on profile pages. Users also have the opti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research
• Chapter 2: Sentiment Analysis: Providing Categorical Insight into Unstructured Textual Data
• Chapter 3: Can Tweets Replace Polls? A U.S. Health-Care Reform Case Study
• Chapter 4: The Facebook Platform and the Future of Social Research
• Chapter 5: Virtual Cognitive Interviewing Using Skype and Second Life
• Chapter 6: Second Life as a Survey Lab: Exploring the Randomized Response Technique in a Virtual Setting
• Chapter 7: Decisions, Observations, and Considerations for Developing a Mobile Survey App and Panel
• Chapter 8: Crowdsourcing: A Flexible Method for Innovation, Data Collection, and Analysis in Social Science Research
• Chapter 9: Collecting Diary Data on Twitter
• Chapter 10: Recruiting Participants with Chronic Conditions in Second Life
• Chapter 11: Gamification of Market Research
• Chapter 12: The Future of Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research
• Index