Social media research is the process of analyzing social media data to understand how an audience interacts with a topic, using tools and data mining techniques to conduct quantitative (and sometimes qualitative) research. . Advanced Social Listening and Audience Intelligence tools and platforms today enable researchers to collect data from specific events, topics or specific audience groups on social media, the Internet, forums, news and blogs. It is a topic that is evolving as researchers develop new methods and techniques to understand how researchers use social media channels, behaviors, and interactions on social media channels. As social media grows in both its size and importance and becomes an integral part of our daily life, using research tools to understand this new platform for discussion is an important new area.

Social media research can take the form of social listening and audience intelligence by observing the content and information generated online and identifying trends and insights emerging from this data.