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"This book covers deep researches from different perspectives & disciplines upon Social Network on social, legal, economic, cultural issues by successful and expert researchers in their field. In this book, different and rigorous analyses of all areas influenced by Social Media and Social Networks researches were made in order to be one of the emerging reliable sources about the Digital Age literature with various dimensions"--

The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods offers a step-by-step guide to overcoming the challenges inherent in research projects that deal with 'big and broad data', from the formulation of research questions through to the interpretation of findings. The handbook includes chapters on specific social media platforms such as Twitter, Sina Weibo and Instagram, as well as a series of critical chapters. The holistic approach is organised into the following sections: Conceptualising & Designing Social Media Research Collection & Storage Qualitative Approaches to Social Media Data Quantitative Approaches to Social Media Data Diverse Approaches to Social Media Data Analytical Tools Social Media Platforms This handbook is the single most comprehensive resource for any scholar or graduate student embarking on a social media project.

An increasingly influential strand of research on social media relies on the concept of affordances to account for effects. However, hindering the possibility of a unified theory of affordances in social media is the conceptual blurring surrounding the concept. This article engages in a comprehensive review of the affordances literature in social media, aiming to provide an overview of the current state of the art and clarify the use of the concept. Through a systematic literature review, the characteristics of affordances research in social media are uncovered: the most prominent areas of application, research approaches, and dominant typologies and conceptualisations. Significant blurriness of the term 'affordance' is identified as well as an inconsistent use in research. To tackle these problems, a unified definition of affordances in social media is proposed based on the synthesis of knowledge on affordances in technology and social media. The suggested definition captures the core aspects of the concept to reduce ambiguity in the use of the concept and further the research on affordances of social media. The article provides the groundwork for future use of affordances theory in social media research.

"More and more researchers want to share research data collected from social media to allow for reproducibility and comparability of results. With this paper we want to encourage them to pursue this aim - despite initial obstacles that they may face. Sharing can occur in various, more or less formal ways. We provide background information that allows researchers to make a decision about whether, how and where to share depending on their specific situation (data, platform, targeted user group, research topic etc.). Ethical, legal and methodological considerations are important for making this decision. Based on these three dimensions we develop a framework for social media sharing that can act as a first set of guidelines to help social media researchers make practical decisions for their own projects. In the long run, different stakeholders should join forces to enable better practices for data sharing for social media researchers. This paper is intended as our call to action for the broader research community to advance current practices of data sharing in the future." (author's abstract)

This perspective article suggests considering the everyday research data management work required to accomplish social media research along different phases in a data lifecycle to inform the ongoing discussion of social media research data's quality and validity. Our perspective is informed by practical experience of archiving social media data, by results from a series of qualitative interviews with social media researchers, as well as by recent literature in the field. We emphasize how social media researchers are entangled in complexities between social media platform providers, social media users, other actors, as well as legal and ethical frameworks, that all affect their everyday research practices. Research design decisions are made iteratively at different stages, involving many decisions that may potentially impact the quality of research. We show that these decisions are often hidden, but that making them visible allows us to better understand what drives social media research into specific directions. Consequently, we argue that untangling and documenting choices during the research lifecycle, especially when researchers pursue specific approaches and may have actively decided against others (often due to external factors) is necessary and will help to spot and address structural challenges in the social media research ecosystem that go beyond critiques of individual opportunistic approaches to easily accessible data.

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the publications on government social media research from the Scopus database from the period of 1998-2021.Based on the keywords used,482 documents related to government social media were retrievedand analysed using various tools. Microsoft Excel was used to conduct the frequency analysis, VOSviewer for data visualization and Harzig's Publish or Perish for citation metrics and analysis. There is a continuous growth of publications on government social media research since 1998. The USA was found to be the largest contributor to government social media, followed by China. In addition, the role of social media in communication technology may take over most of the government services in delivering the information and services to the people. This paper provides a comprehensive compilation of articles offering a general overview of the leading trends and researchers to the development of government social media. This paper reports using standard bibliometric indicators such as the growth of publications, authorship patterns, collaboration and prolific authors, country contribution, most active institutions preferred journals and top-cited articles. ; This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the publications on government social media research from the Scopus database from the period of 1998-2021.Based on the keywords used,482 documents related to government social media were retrieved and analysed using various tools. Microsoft Excel was used to conduct the frequency analysis, VOSviewer for data visualization and Harzig's Publish or Perish for citation metrics and analysis. There is a continuous growth of publications on government social media research since 1998. The USA was found to be the largest contributor to government social media, followed by China. In addition, the role of social media in communication technology may take over most of the government services in delivering the information and services to the people. This paper provides a comprehensive compilation of articles offering a general overview of the leading trends and researchers to the development of government social media. This paper reports using standard bibliometric indicators such as the growth of publications, authorship patterns, collaboration and prolific authors, country contribution, most active institutions preferred journals and top-cited articles.

"Mixed Methods Perspectives on Communication and Social Media Research addresses the need for a discipline-cum-methodology-tailored book that navigates the current research spectrum of communication and social media ("CommSocMed"). It examines contemporary and relevant issues that intertwine the expansive spheres of CommSocMed"--

This article sets out to map the broad contours of social media research, teasing out in particular the ways in which the scholarly literature in the fields of media and communication research has addressed social media as a phenomenon since the emergence of the term 'social media' in the early 2000s. As a communicative phenomenon and research object, social media would appear to be in flux. Changes to existing services, the emergence of new services, and the disappearance of previously popular services testify to the sense of social media as a moving target. Researchers of social media seem to accept change, rather than continuity, as a condition for the study of social media. This is evident in our choice of research topics and data sources, but also in our discourses on social media. By examining the sense of flux of social media research in a historical perspective, this article aims to provide useful directions for future media and communication research on social media. Specifically, it suggests ways to stabilise social media as an object of study and to install a greater historical awareness in social media research.

"Mixed Methods Perspectives on Communication and Social Media Research addresses the need for a discipline-cum-methodology-tailored book that navigates the current research spectrum of communication and social media ("CommSocMed"). It examines contemporary and relevant issues that intertwine the expansive spheres of CommSocMed"--

Drawing upon the social media phenomena in both practical and academic arenas, this study explored patterns and trends of social media research over the past fourteen years across four disciplines. Findings exhibit a definite increasing number of social-media-related studies. This indicates that social media have gained incremental attention among scholars, and who have, in turn, been responding and keeping pace with the increased usage and impact of this new medium. The authors suggest that future scholarly endeavors emphasize prospective aspects of social media, foreseeing applications and technological progress and elaborating theory.