Archiving Social Media Data: Challenges and Proposed Solutions [Webinar]

While much effort has gone into developing tools and methods for collecting and analyzing social media data, there still is considerable uncertainty regarding the archiving of these data. This webinar brought together experts from various institutions that have experience in working with social media data to discuss practical, ethical, and legal challenges. In the opening presentations, Libby Hemphill (ICPSR) addressed ICPSR's efforts to enhance metadata for social media objects, integrating social media data into the restricted data ecosystem at ICPSR, and the changes to technical infrastructure that social media data require. Janez Štebe (Slovenian Social Sciences Data Archives) discussed the application of FAIR indicators to social media archiving and provide an overview of existing cases of social media archiving from the SERISS project. Sara D. Thomson (University of Edinburgh) presented on common challenges and potential shared solutions across different archive sectors to ethically preserving and sharing social media. Libby Bishop (GESIS) presented metadata challenges regarding social media data, and present draft recommendations of metadata elements and documentation developed from examples of ingesting such data at GESIS. Sebastian Karcher (Qualitative Data Repository) discussed the distinct opportunities and challenges of archiving small-n social media data commonly used in qualitative social science research with a special focus on tools for archivists and researchers. Oliver Watteler (GESIS) addressed the challenges presented by cases in which researchers have circumvented legal restrictions, like license agreements or usage contracts, in order to get to the data they need. These presentations were followed by a roundtable discussion with the attendees. Note: This video is also available for viewing on Youtube.