Social Media as Mirror of Society

Abstract

Over the last decade, social media use has gained much attention of scholarly researchers. One specific reason of this interest is the use of social media for communication; a trend that is gaining tremendous popularity. Every social media platform has developed its own set of application programming interface (API). Through these APIs, the data available on a particular social media platform can be accessed. However, the data available is limited and it is difficult to ascertain the possible conclusions that can be drawn about society on the basis of this data. This chapter explores the ways social researchers and scientists can use social media data to support their research and analysis.