Social media data can be vast and understanding which data source works best for a research project, as well as the ethical considerations it requires and how to go about extracting and analysing this data, is fundamental for students to grasp. Working with social media data requires a specific set of knowledge and skills and this Fix answers questions such as:

• Can social media data meet my research needs?
• How do I gather and use social media data ethically?
• What social media data do I need to gather?
• How do I build an effective social media sampling strategy?
• How do I extract data from social media platforms?
• What steps should I take to plan my data collection?