Document Type
Conference Paper
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
Computer Sciences
Abstract
Researchers must collect and analyse new data that will enhance the body of knowledge. It is for this reason that data is of major importance to researchers. All aspects of a research project involve data, from navigating existing data, to understanding how data is used in the world and why it is important to learn to collect data and make predictions. Researchers need to consider the types of data that are possible and examine and weight each option so they can determine what sources of data will answer the research questions or hypotheses. Researchers, who require a large amount of participants to contribute to their data collection and assist in their research, are limited in the choice of current research methods including questionnaires, postal surveys and online surveys and also limited in the number of respondents they can obtain to participate in their research. This paper proposes a new research method through the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS’s). It aims to evaluate and investigate if SNS’s are a feasible method for conducting research and collecting data. SNS’s offer researchers the potential to reach millions of people worldwide quickly and at a low cost. Facebook currently ranked as the second most popular website worldwide has over 400 million active users. MySpace has over 130 million. The majority of the world’s highest ranked SNS’s today provide a developer platform for people to create their own applications. Also within this research is an exploration and investigation into the rational of using SNS’s as a research method through the development of a prototype application integrated with Facebook services.
DOI
10.21427/D77X93
Recommended Citation
Redmond,F.:Social Networking Sites:Evaluating and Investigating Their Use in Academic Research. Presented at ICERI 2010 (International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation) that was held in Madrid on the 15th, 16th and 17th of November, 2010.
Funder
School of Languages
Publication Details
This paper was presented at the following conference: ICERI 2010 (International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation) that was held in Madrid on the 15th, 16th and 17th of November, 2010. Two ISBN publications were produced following this.