Various new possibilities and challenges are generated by digital and social media and large available data-sets for conducting research focused on ever-developing online news ecosystems, write Niina Sormanen, Jukka Rohila, Epp Lauk, Turo Uskali, Jukka Jouhki and Maija Penttinen, of University of Jyväskylä.

In this paper the researchers present a novel computational technique for gathering and processing large quantities of data from Facebook and demonstrate how to use it for detecting and analysing issue-attention cycles and news flows in Facebook groups and pages.

The study concludes that the use of innovative research techniques of internet studies and analysis of large data-sets in studying digital and social media vastly widens the scope and quality of the information that social scientists can have at their disposal.

Read the article here (free abstract).

Picture: data.path Ryoji.Ikeda – 3 by r2hox, licence CC BY-SA 2.0