Representation and communication: challenges in interpreting large social media datasets

Authors:
Mattias Rost;Louise Barkhuus;Henriette Cramer;Barry Brown
Affiliations:
Mobile Life @ SICS, Stockholm, Sweden;Stockholm University, Kista, Sweden;Yahoo! Research, Sunnyvale, California, USA;Mobile Life @ DSV, Stockholm, Sweden
Venue:
Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Year:
2013

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Abstract

Online services provide a range of opportunities for understanding human behaviour through the large aggregate data sets that their operation collects. Yet the data sets they collect do not unproblematically model or mirror the world events. In this paper we use data from Foursquare, a popular location check-in service, to argue for the importance of analysing social media as a communicative rather than representational system. Drawing on logs of all Foursquare check-ins over eight weeks we highlight four features of Foursquare's use: the relationship between attendance and check-ins, event check-ins, commercial incentives to check-in, and lastly humorous check-ins These points show how large data analysis is affected by the end user uses to which social networks are put.