How do you capture meaningful data using social media?

How do you capture meaningful data using social media?

This question has been on my mind a lot since we launched the Access Project. As you can see in the attached photo, I took some time out the other day to jot down some ideas on a whiteboard in an attempt to better understand where all of our data will be coming from and how to piece it together in a way that will make sense and tell a coherent story about the process and outcomes of the project.

In between my scribbles, I kept thinking about the way we interact and build relationships with social media. For instance, Facebook has become a central part of my online life because it connects me to people I have chosen to maintain personal and professional relationships with, plus I like its (relatively) simplistic user interface, layout and overall aesthetics. As my main online network, I have grown attached to the way things are organized and feel comfortable knowing how my information is shared within my social circles.

Just recently, however, I find that every site I go to seems to be jumping on the SNS bandwagon – all at once, features that were popularized by Facebook and Twitter like chat, profiles, discussion forums, like/unlike options, and status updates are proliferating all over the web. Nowadays, I feel overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of social media tools and am a bit resistant to this new wave of hyperconnectivity, particularly since it’s not necessarily by choice! I can’t help but wonder: Is this benefitting anyone? What happens when all of our networks give users the opportunity to share information through a countless number of tools and platforms? Does this threaten the quality of our online conversations, interactions and relationships? Is the overabundance of social media tools diluting rather than fostering online communications?

I’ve started thinking about this more and wondering how to cultivate a meaningful conversation about tobacco and contraband for the Access Project. With too many outlets and without a strong online user community, it becomes more important to centralize data so that you don’t end up with fragments of information in cyberspace. At the same time, the user experience also plays an important role – to ask someone to join another social network (that functions much like all the others that they are already on) may not be the best way to engage new users. While I love sites like Ning that allow you to create your own SNS, it seems like we are offered the same old compartmentalized format: a page for videos with commentary, a page for photos with like/unlike options, a blog stream, etc. Is this the only way to organize information? Are there ways we can re-design these platforms that will encourage people to think and engage with online content differently? What alternative ways can we can re-shape SNS for the purposes of collecting data for research? These are questions I hope to unpack as we go...