This chapter reviews the state-of-the-art in relation to how social media platforms are being used by researchers to inform their work across a range of sectors. The argument developed is that in terms of developing insight into how and why data derived from social media is being used in research, greater understanding of the particular technological affordances and constraints associated with individual platforms is required in terms of how these capacities and capabilities structure what data can be collected and processed. Having set out an analysis of these issues, a brief case study is provided based upon the authors’ work, exploring how social media analytics can be blended with more traditional ethnographic field observations to extend the opportunities for observational research of large-scale and dynamic events. The intent being to show how the impacts of social media upon the research process may not be confined to the study of digital aspects of social life, but may have more subtle and intriguing impacts upon the ways research is conducted in the future.