Ashley Rose Kelly
Meagan Kittle Autry
ABSTRACT
Humanistic research into social media is presently diverse in approach, but rich in theoretical underpinnings. It is unsurprising that there is some difficulty in translating often text-based approaches to multi-media rich, rapidly-evolving social networking environments. We explore theoretical issues for studying social media with respect to one popular research methodology: case study research (CSR). Here we examine the challenges that social media pose to CSR in the humanities and then advance an approach using social network analysis (SNA) to assist in selecting case studies. This approach, we argue, improves selection of case studies by considering the network structures of social media.
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Index Terms
- A humanistic approach to the study of social media: combining social network analysis & case study research
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