Social and online media research – data, metrics and methods

Studies and current researches in online digital media and communication science are related to Web 2.0 at least from two perspectives: either to better understand this medium as research object, or to collect data on different topics. Social media can be a tremendous data source and topics for researchers. At the same time, these data are found in multimedia formats on different platforms, are updated continuously, and could be posted by professionals or users. This situation requires different solutions for data analysis. The objective of this paper is to show what metrics, measurements, methods and tools are used for by researchers to study and analyze online digital media, in their work with academic purposes. The concern of this paper is to show which research methods are used for social and digital media analysis and which data, metrics and measures are considered as basis of the analysis. Case studies in this paper refer to scientific articles dealing with social media research in online media and communication studies. Findings of this paper show the specificity and trends in media and communication researches related with social and digital media, and relative to economic and social needs. The conclusion that emerges from this paper is that research on and about the Web 2.0 invents or redefines traditional methods and tools, or adopts new ones.