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Social media is an ever growing platform for people to share their thoughts and opinions, but it is also becoming the best way for some research to be done. Because posters don’t think about researchers looking at their post in the form of meta data, many different biases are avoided. This gives a newfound accuracy to the data we collect through this medium. That doesn’t mean it is a perfect source for information though. Because the research is being done online, there is no way to tell who it is that you are getting your information from. There can also be a bias, because not everyone has access to the internet, or posts their thoughts on social media.

In “Blog Post 8: What you can, can’t and shouldn’t do with Social Media Data” by CN, they also reference the positive and negative outcomes of using this method of data collection. It seems like this should just be another tool researchers use, and not replace all forms of data collection.