Applying Critical Theories to Social Media Mining and Analysis

To add to the limited higher education research that seeks to explore the riches of social media as a space for data collection, this chapter provides an example for how to use social media mining in combination with critical theories as an exploratory tool. This study is designed to apply critical theories to social media mining techniques in order to examine how membership organizations have engaged in discourse around racial issues and social inequities in higher education. This chapter will examine how associations engage particular social media contexts for the purpose of influencing educational research and praxis and provide future directions for using social media to expose social injustices.