Modeling, obtaining and storing data from social media tools with Artefact-Actor-Networks

Social interaction between people has peerlessly changed with the availability of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The Internet brought new ways of communication technologies to live and enhanced people’s reachability, augmented possibilities for personal presence and the sharing of information objects. People are engaging in social networks in a steadily growing manner and share information objects within their communities. The high initial amount of data in such networks can serve as foundation of serious investigations towards social interactions of communities of learners. In this paper we introduce the technological foundation and architecture to model, obtain and store such user and object information in so-called Artefact-Actor-Networks. Artefact-Actor-Networks combine classical social networks with artefact networks that are constructed by the use of the information objects and their connections.