Approaches to archiving social media

Social media appears in many shapes and forms, aimed at many different audiences and serves many different purposes. This variety also affects the ways we can consider what a social media archival collection is, and how it is created.

In this section, two broad approaches to social media archiving will be presented, i.e. "look and feel" and "structured data". These are not mutually exclusive, and in many cases it could be preferable or advisable to use both (if time and resources allow it).

By explaining the differences between the two, tool selection can be made easier and more efficient, according to the goals of selecting and the specific needs of each organization.