Social Media, Metrics, and Analytics: LJ3

During the last two weeks in this class, I read about Microblogging and how social media can be used for research. Therefore, part of the readings are based on metrics and analysis with the use of Social Media. These readings make me understand the article "We are data" by John Cheney-Lippold, where he tells us that technology has become an important part of our personal and professional lives. Since we constantly share information with the Internet and it is being collected to be shared with third parties.

A microblogging according to Nations, D. (2019), mentions that it is a mixture of blogs and instant messaging, achieving a faster form of communication that allows sharing short messages online with other users. Among the social medias that are considered Microblogging are Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. This type of content has become extremely popular because it allows sharing not only text but also images, videos, audio, and hyperlinks. According to the reading of the classes, microblogging has some benefits that traditional blogs do not. Some of its benefits include the ease with which users can make short posts more frequently and the convenience of using them on mobile phones.

Within the microblogging readings, the use of Twitter to conduct research studies stands out. As Ahmed, W. (2021) mentions, Twitter can be used as a source of useful and freely accessible data to analyze the interaction that the user has with different types of technology (ICT). However, to study this data they must enter a contract that addresses both confidential and ethical issues. Another of the ways in which Twitter can be used is according to Henry, J (2022), its use as an educational tool. Within this most outstanding tool is that teachers can create communities where their students learn and search for new information.

In the reading of chapter 6, he talks about metrics and analysis of social networks. According to the book, social media represents an invaluable tool for measuring human behavior and communication behavior. Since these sites represent the interaction that users have through their mobile devices with the web. As the author of the book mentions, the interactions we carry out on the Internet leave a trace of all our activities carried out and that finally become data that can be analyzed by research groups. Many applications store more than the information with which we interact within these are our location and private information. For this reason, attempts have been made to regulate the collection and use of this data through Laws such as "The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018" where the right to privacy and the right of the user to give approval to sell or share their private information.

Because of this course, I just started using TikTok, which is consider an application of Microblogging category. I found this application interesting because it allows you to share images, videos and small clicks. On the other hand, I found it interesting how these social media can store our information and all the activity that we carry out. Undoubtedly, it is necessary that as users we be informed by the different social media that we use about what type of our information is being shared with third parties. However, knowing all this information does not change the way I use my social networks as I try to manage myself appropriately. Undoubtedly, as users we must know that nothing, we do on the web is private and/or hidden. So, it is important to learn to behave ethically as we would do in our daily lives.