ESRC Capital Funding: Social Data Science Lab - Continuation of Methods and Infrastructure Development for Open Data Analytics in Social Research

The Social Data Science Lab has been established with the mission of democratising access to big social data among the academic, public and third sectors, and to support real-time social data analytics for research, policy & practice. The proposed capability project is designed to address existing technical and methodological shortcomings in our ability to marshal big social data for social research purposes. In particular, the project will provide enhanced and sustainable social media data collection and analysis technologies to academic, public and third sector researchers. This capability project will achieve this by: 1. Providing the required technical resource and expertise to: i) optimise existing Lab social media analytics technologies for more efficient social media data collection, transformation and analysis across operating platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS); ii) integrate existing social media analytics tools (such as demographic and text classification tools); iii) make existing Lab tools extendable by the researcher community; iv) adapt Lab tools to user requirements and changes in social media provider technologies (i.e API changes); and v) support researchers in their social media data and analysis needs via dedicated Lab training and working-papers; 2. Providing the required social science resource and expertise to: i) liaise with the researcher community to gather social media tool requirements; ii) liaise with ESRC administrative, local government and consumer big data centres; iii) write training materials and coordinate capability building activities; and iv) support researchers in their data and analysis queries; 3. Ensuring the required investigator time to: i) manage the optimisation and enhancement of Lab tools and to implement a 'sustainability' business model; ii) manage existing partnerships with public, private and third sector users and the various ESRC big data network centres in the UK and elsewhere; iii) develop new partnerships with data providers; and iv) inform and oversee the development of world-leading training and capability building in Big Social Data Analytics; 4. Exploring options for the sustainable processing of social media analytics within UK HE research infrastructure and providing an options paper for use by existing ESRC big data investments, and ultimately Phase 3 of the network.