Critical Discourse Analysis: Toward Theories in Social Media

Social media can be conceptualized as an emerging frontier where new forms of social relations causing power differences and other forms of unacceptable social practices develop at the intersection of human collective communicative acts and information technology. This emergence has created a need for considering novel approaches for investigating these emerging phenomena in social media. In this research, we present Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as an approach for theory development in social media. Discussion revolves around CDAs place in critical information systems (IS) research. Together with an example of a CDA study applied to social media this discussion serves to inform IS researchers of a viable option for theory building in social media.