Abstract
Why study social media data mining? Helen Kennedy’s Post, Mine, Repeat grapples with this question early by turning it sideways: why is social media data a particularly fraught and unique area for study, and further, why should we be concerned with the various actors engaging in this practice? Social media usage produces an ever-expanding font of data, and in this book, Kennedy outlines the mining and analysis of that data – and the ethical entanglements around the practice – by the so-called ordinary actors. Kennedy’s ‘ordinary’, perhaps apart from some other definitions, here refers to ‘organizations whose operations contribute to structuring daily life’. Post, Mine, Repeat focuses on the everyday, mundane process of collection and analysis social media data mining has become. Drawing on active and activist research conducted by organizations within the public sector, commercial social insights companies, and focus groups conducted with on-the-ground social media users, Kennedy provides a broad overview of the changing role of social media and the use of data mining from an everyday, or ordinary, perspective.
Social media data mining can spark concerns about privacy and encroachment, as with the story Kennedy relates early in the text, of the store that knew a teenager was pregnant before her family did, just from tracking her purchases. But Post, Mine, Repeat, despite a heavy focus on ethics, also offers a brighter side of data mining and social media research. Academic study of social media is leading more traditionally qualitative researchers to incorporate quantitative methods, and social media research fosters new discussions of ethical issues in research, discussions often public-facing. Should we be concerned about social media data mining? Of course, but there is some comfort in knowing researchers are weighing these questions as they evolve. Big Data is a big issue, an ethical snarl, but Kennedy slices through the dilemmas of data to provide concrete answers and paths for researchers to follow.
The first three chapters of the book establish the grounds Kennedy is working with: framing the larger issues around social media data mining and establishing the scope of platforms and their uses. With chapter 3, Kennedy unpacks the key debates and concerns around social media, with a particular focus toward agential issues and ethics. The next several chapters delve into specifics; chapters 4 and 5 offer a focus on public sector and commercial data mining techniques, along with empirical data from Kennedy’s work with local governing bodies in the United Kingdom and museum managers (chapter 4), and employees and clients engaging in third-party insight research. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 turn toward impact: the consequences of using social media data, user concerns, and positive impacts that can result from data mining and analysis. Post, Mine, Repeat concludes with a look forward in chapter 9 that acknowledges the changing relations data analysis creates and offers some indication of how analysts from all sectors can improve data relations and use data mining ethically.
For academic readers, chapter 7 may be among the most useful, particularly for students beginning to learn about social media data mining. While several chapters unpack the methods for social media data mining, chapter 7 delves into the understudied area of user attitudes on research, including the results of focus group research conducted on attitudes toward the very ‘ordinary’ analysis the book engages. As Kennedy writes, user attitudes aren’t the final indicator of whether or not analysts should study social media data, but they can and should help inform our use of the personal data users offer up, inadvertently or not, for study.
Kennedy identifies a number of openings in the literature around social media data mining, such as those issues of user attitudes around data mining analysis and the lack of research into the work of social media insight companies. These openings, while offering opportunities for researchers, also raise one of the book’s most troubling points: since social media data analysis has become more common, a fetishization of numbers has also arisen. The flip side of those aforementioned qualitative scholars suddenly moving to quantitative or mixed method approaches is sometimes due to pressure to ‘legitimize’ research with the weight of numerical data. Kennedy urges a more holistic view influenced by cultural studies, advising researchers to keep multiple concerns in mind when conducting social media analysis. ‘Ordinary’ isn’t just about the everyday use of social media analysis but the book’s end, but also a caution that such data use is always thorny, no matter how mundane it has become. Data may tell stories, but with social media, those numbers exist in a networked, ever-changing context, and the context is key in understanding users and relationships.
Of course, any book about social media is practically outdated by the time the ink dries on the page, a fact Kennedy acknowledges early (and often). But here, this problem is magnified; new data sources, relations, and methods are continually emerging, and platforms and technologies shift before methods can even be finalized. Kennedy, however, set out to create not a how-to manual for researchers, but something larger: categorical lenses through which to study the use of social media data, lenses that will endure after the initial technologies that shaped them have themselves faded away. The book’s content, despite what seems to be a narrow frame of ‘ordinary’ users, is nonetheless far-reaching and among the most up-to-date available. One of the key features of the book is the way each chapter concludes with the pros and cons, the concerns and ethical issues, of the strategies, tactics, and issues raised within. Rather than glossing over ethical issues, the book continually reengages with the most pressing questions of data mining, keeping concerns specific and grounded in research tactics, a feature that will help the book maintain relevance for future researchers, regardless of changes to social media platforms and data relations. It is this continual reflexivity that truly elevates Post, Mine, Repeat; Kennedy’s book is just as aware of context as its author cautions, and the result is a highly readable guide for reconsidering the everyday use of social media data.