The contrast between academic/critical and administrative research inaugurated by Lazarsfeld is extremely a living matter in the context of the research about social media communication. More and more business entities, in fact, commission academic research aimed at increasing the understanding of the dynamics of communication activated into social media, in order to develop its potential in terms of business. It is a relatively new area of research that contains dynamic tensions to explore and to solve. Building upon the choices made by an administrative research project carried out in an academic context, the article aims to investigate the open issues of such a field of research and to analyze the relationship between academic and administrative research. The proposal is that it is no longer useful to contrast the two areas, but, rather, it is desirable to build a connection in order to make their relationship virtuous. This link is found in a cross-cutting aspect to the two areas, that is the ethics of research that it is not limited to the application of rules or protocols, however indispensable, but it becomes a self-reflexive practice in which the researcher is constantly assessing its role, the object and the method of investigation. Ethics, then, is intended as a practice of accountability and boost the knowledge of a genuine portion of reality. Finally, it is as an impetus to establish a system of “permanent criticism” that holds open the potential of social media and it is proposed to establish a thoughtful process about the context in which they are used.