8.1. Sources of Social Media Data

Social media platforms collect various types of data on their users.

Some data is directly provided to the platform by the users. Platforms may ask users for information like:

• email address

• name

• profile picture

• interests

• friends

Platforms also collect information on how users interact with the site. They might collect information like (they don’t necessarily collect all this, but they might):

• when users are logged on and logged off

• who users interact with

• What users click on

• what posts users pause over

• where users are located

• what users send in direct messages to each other

Online advertisers can see what pages their ads are being requested on, and track users across those sites. So, if an advertiser sees their ad is being displayed on an Amazon page for shoes, then the advertiser can start showing shoe ads to that same user when they go to another website.

Additionally, social media might collect information about non-users, such as when a user posts a picture of themselves with a friend who doesn’t have an account, or a user shares their phone contact list with a social media site, some of whom don’t have accounts (Facebook does this).

Social media platforms then use “data mining” to search through all this data to try to learn more about their users, find patterns of behavior, and in the end, make more money.