E-CONTENT
[All Things Digital]
Social Media as a Primary Source:
A Coming of Age
W
hat is a primary source? Many research guides
created by academic librarians for students
define a primary source as an original object
or document—firsthand information that
was written or created during the time under
study. These guides include examples of various types of pre–
Digital Age resources such as diaries, news-film footage, and
interviews. In addition, traditional primary source documents
tend to include public voices as records of historical events. But
what about today? What is a primary source in the Digital Age?
Signs indicate that the research guides are being rewritten
to accommodate the impact of social media on informational
resources. Social media expands our reach more quickly, much
further, and at a grander scale through words, pictures, and
videos. Social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube,
and Instagram empower individuals to share their voice in a
media-centric model. With communication of information
fundamentally changing, the definition of a primary source
needs to reflect this change. Considering that Twitter alone generates over one million tweets daily and that “an estimated 61%
of adults and 74% of teens interact with social media sites,” it is
easy to see that “the definition of event reporting is confounded
with the instantaneous recording of historical information.”1
Indeed, some researchers and scholars deem Twitter to be
one of the most informative resources available with regard to
what’s going on locally, nationally, and globally in modern-day
culture. Consequently, in 2010 Twitter announced that it was
donating its digital archive of public tweets to the Library of
Congress. “The Twitter digital archive has extraordinary potential for research into our contemporary way of life,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.2
Social media allows students, faculty, scholars, and the public at-large to communicate and collaborate in ways that disregard institutional boundaries. In September 2012, students in
a journalism course at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University used mobile devices and social media to
cover the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North
Carolina. The course not only allowed the students to obtain
practical work experience but also exposed them to traditional
and emerging communication theories and concepts associated with social media in the digital world.3
In a recent study of social media sites currently popular
among scholars, the most frequently used sites for scholarly
work were listservs, non-academic social networks, blogs (read
or comment), online document management, media repositories, and wikis. When respondents were asked to indicate the
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benefits of using social media among scholars, the following
were the top five answers:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Keeping up-to-date with topics
Following other researchers’ work
Discovering new ideas or publications
Promoting current work/research
Making new research contacts4
Yet some shy away from social media as a primary source
for news, or even as a secondary source for research, because in
many instances there is no evidence of credibility to the information. In the past, the integrity of information and research
data was a staple for media and researchers alike: evidence and
documented sources were needed to print information. In
today’s Digital Age where social media reigns, such credibility
can be suspect. As a result, the mining of social data as a primary data-gathering tool is not without limitations.
Information literacy, a cornerstone for 21st-century education, entails teaching students how to search for information
and evaluate its validity, credibility, and usefulness. Given
the abundance of information available over the Internet,
students as well as educators and researchers want trusted filters. In regard to the filtering of social media information and
alleviating the concerns about the credibility of social media
information sources, the researcher Semil Shah notes: “It is the
realization that who shares information online is oftentimes
more important than what that information is.” He explains: “In
order for me to read something, I need a social signal to trigger
and capture my attention.” Hence, he evaluates the authenticity
of content in part based on the trust he has in the individual
sharing that content.5
Looking to the future, some are concerned as to whether
social media platforms are merely fads with limited lifespans.
Services have lost their relevance (e.g., Myspace and Friendster)
as users migrate to new platforms. However, academia has
reached a tipping point in terms of scholarly communication,
collaboration, and the sharing and dissemination of information with those who are trusted. Social media tools will continue
to evolve and flourish because they are not so much about the
platform as they are about the content and about the credibility
of the individuals producing and sharing the content.
Social media has come of age as a primary source, and there
is tremendous opportunity for academics—and academic
librarians—to begin treating it as such. The question is: How do
we harness the potential of social media sites to enhance the
E-Content Department Editor: Diane J. Graves
Dung Hoang © 2013
By VICKI COLEMAN
research process and scholarly communications? Where do we
begin?
First, we can assume a proactive role in rewriting the rules by
acknowledging in research guides that social media platforms
such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook do contain firsthand
accounts of history and are tremendously informative in terms
of modern-day culture and trends. Also, social media is a gateway
to many thoughtful blogs and online conversations that advance
scholarly conversations and serve as viable secondary sources.6
Second, we can expand efforts with information literacy to
include approaches for students to take in developing trustworthy academic and professional social networks. Hence, we can
offer tips on how students should select Twitter users to “follow”
and Facebook users to “friend”—with the expectation that those
individuals and organizations will help students to filter trustworthy information in support of their academic needs.
Third and last, we must keep current with the social media
channels that scholars of varying disciplines use, understanding that users often migrate from their preferred social media
platforms. By doing so, we can more readily make referrals to
credible information sources. n
w w w. e d u c a u s e . e d u / e r o
Notes
  1. Nicholas J. Kelling, Angela S. Kelling, and John F. Lennon, “The Tweets That
Killed a University: A Case Study Investigating the Use of Traditional and
Social Media in the Closure of a State University,” Computers in Human Behavior,
vol. 29, no. 6 (November 2013), p. 2659.
  2. Billington quoted in Matt Raymond and Greg Pass, “Twitter Donates Entire
Tweet Archive to Library of Congress,” news release, Library of Congress,
April 15, 2010, http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2010/10-081.html.
  3. See “A&T Students Cover the DNC,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/
user/AGGIESDNC2012/about. The course was taught by Kim Smith (http://
www.drkimsmith.com), Department of Journalism and Mass Communication,
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
  4. Anatoliy Gruzd and Melissa Goertzen, “Wired Academia: Why Social Science
Scholars Are Using Social Media,” Proceedings of the 46th Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), January 7–10, 2013, pp. 3336–37.
  5. Semil Shah, “How Social and Primary Sources Affect Online Media Brands,”
TechCrunch, July 28, 2013, http://www.techcrunch.com/2013/07/28/how-social
-vs-primary-sources-affect-online-media-brands/.
  6. Edward L. Ayers, “Does Digital Scholarship Have a Future?” EDUCAUSE
Review, vol. 48, no. 4 (July/August 2013), http://www.educause.edu/library/
ERM1343.
Vicki Coleman ([email protected]) is Dean of Library Services, North
Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
© 2013 Vicki Coleman. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Unported License.
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