"We used to have fun but then data came into play...": Social media at the crossroads between big data and digital literacy issues

With the significant growth of social media use for formal and informal learning, research scholarship has also progressively focused on the threats that the manipulation of user behavior via algorithms and the misinformation pushed in disparate ways are causing to democratic participation and online civic engagement. In this chapter, we address the main potential and pitfalls of social media use in higher education and how the increased challenges posed by big data and the growing datafication demand new literacy practices. Whether it is to analyze the teaching and learning practices in the university lecture halls or academic staff's professional learning, it has become imperative to be aware of the inner mechanisms that may hinder the deployment of social media both for educational aims and for social media research. In this light, we adopt a learning ecologies perspective to explore issues of data literacy applied to social media and provide indications for professional development and problems of use of social media data.