From Reach to Relationship: Reframing Social Media Recruitment as an Action Research Practice

Abstract

Social media is routine infrastructure for participant recruitment in health and social research, yet methodological discussions typically evaluate platforms by reach, cost, speed, targeting, and conversion. This paper reframes social media recruitment through an action-research lens, positioning recruitment as an early site where participation is constituted, relationships begin, power is negotiated, and learning occurs.
Drawing on scholarship about social-media recruitment and action research, we examine the practical possibilities and relational tensions of digitally mediated invitations to participate. Social media can reduce costs, accelerate access to dispersed and stigmatized populations, and enable adaptation, while also reproducing sampling inequalities, platform surveillance, algorithmic governance, hostile interactions, fraud, and verification labour.
We introduce recruitment-as-inquiry: the proposition that recruitment helps constitute the participatory field rather than merely populate it. We propose five interconnected practices: co-defining recruitment purpose; selecting platforms with communities; treating invitations as relational encounters; reflexively examining participation, absence, and exclusion; protecting integrity without undermining trust; and returning recruitment learning to subsequent inquiry and action. This framework extends action research upstream, aligning digital recruitment with its democratic, relational, reflexive, and transformative commitments.