Davide Bennato, University of Catania - Department of Humanistic Science, Italy

Using social media data for social science research
One of the main trend in social science research is the use of social media data either for studying communities in the participative web, or for the analysis of the social behaviour in context like public opinion formation, networked audiences, social television. Handling this kind of data need two different competencies: a sociological one for the research design and a technical one for collecting, archiving and analyzing this kind of data. This tutorial will describe how to design a social research based on social media data, how to collect and analyze this kind of data and how to interpret the results. For this reason the tutorial will also illustrate a set of case studies in community analysis, social media and political opinion, social media and television consumption.