Following a conversation on the Association Of Internet Researchers (AOIR)’s mailing-list, the SocialMediaLab (developed at the Australian National University) package emerges as a tool for collecting data on social media platforms for virtual ethnography analysis, among other types of analysis.

http://voson.anu.edu.au/SocialMediaLab

Although the handling of this software suite requires some basis in programming, the authors have written an “Absolute Beginner’s” guide for SocialMediaLab.

http://voson.anu.edu.au/papers/SocialMediaLab/Absolute_Beginners_Guide_to_SocialMediaLab.pdf