Towards a social media research methodology: Defining approaches and ethical concerns

Social media research and suitable methodologies and ethical approaches for analysing social media data are still emerging. This paper presents a methodology for projects using social media data alongside consideration of ethics within the social media analysis context. Earlier stages of the methodology will be expanded to develop a strategy for examining ethics alongside consideration of the relevant analysis techniques that may be employed. This will provide a comprehensive methodology that will provide a springboard for the clear and ethically sound scrutiny of social media data. We aim to present the challenges of using social media data, while the inclusion of ethical and legal aspects in this paper aim to draw researchers' attention to the peculiarity issues involved with dealing with social media data.