New media are forms of media that are native to computers, computational and relying on computers for redistribution. Some examples of new media are telephones, computers, virtual worlds, single media, website games, human-computer interface, computer animation and interactive computer installations. Interactive Research
According to Romano et al. (2013), interactive research occurs when "a researcher wishes to access the [social media website] content that is not publicly available" (pg. 710). Because researchers have limited ways of accessing this data, this could mean that a researcher sends a Facebook user a friend request, or follows a user on Twitter in order to gain access to potentially protected tweets (pg.711). While it could be argued that such actions would violate a social media user's expectation of privacy, Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe (2007) argued that actions like "friending" or "following" an individual on social media constitutes a "loose tie" relationship and therefore not sufficient to establish a reasonable expectation of privacy since individuals often have friends or followers they have never even met.
Survey and Interview Research
Because research on social media occurs online, it is difficult for researchers to observe participant reactions to the informed consent process. For example, when collecting information about activities that are potentially illegal, or recruiting participants from stigmatized populations, this lack of physical proximity could potentially negatively impact the informed consent process. Another important consideration regards the confidentiality of information provided by participants. While information provided over the internet might be perceived as lower risk, studies that publish direct quotes from study participants might expose them to the risk of being identified via a Google search.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media