ICT, Datafication, Covid-19, Social Listening and AI Technology in Development
Big Data from Social Media – The Art and Use of Social listening

Big Data from Social Media – The Art and Use of Social listening

Scavenging the social media for content, events, news and insights is what we do every day. Social media is the place where people are talking and exchanging opinions about content and companies and organizations are largely eavesdropping by monitoring and listening to the social media (see also the other Big Data posts on this blog), as this can improve their understanding of the public attitude and awareness (of their product, brand, their competitors). Social Media monitoring also allows the organization to safeguard (online) reputation and for example debunk phony information or posts. Social Listening goes a step further by further analyzing the discourse of and conversations about the topics important to your organization or research.

Social Media monitoring and listening is an accessible Big Data analysis method that merely needs a laptop, internet and a social media monitoring tool (there are quite a few out there). You set up an account, select the relevant key words, hashtags, organizations, influential people and network you wish to listen to. The social media software tool then scours different social media platforms in search of the information that you selected and makes the data comprehensible in visualizations. Using the paid platforms (with often 2 weeks free subscription) to monitor and listen to social media, makes it for researchers or practitioners without expert knowledge of Data Science, a very accessible method to generate, access and analyze data.

Many companies are employing this approach in their digital marketing to for example increase customer satisfaction, their brand reputation and to grow their business, but also in social research and development organizations this tool is becoming increasingly popular. Researching what people say about your organization, the projects and campaigns you rolled out and the perception on your services or products, gives valuable insights on trends, impact, and engagement that you can use on a strategic level. But is it all that easy or convenient to use, and is it the magic tool to better understand a population and its social phenomena? And what could be possible conditions for a successful implementation of Social Listening in Organizations for Development?

Several research reports and articles in various fields (e.g. Healthcare, Sustainability, Crisis Detection and Communication, COVID-19 pandemic) have shown promising results and hands-on advice to employ a social listening strategy, suggesting even that Social Listening can be used as an alternative for focus group sessions and surveys. It is those practical uses and best practices of social listening that I will be exploring – the use of social listening to analyze the public discourse, how it can add value to the NGO and development sector’s impact, engagement and awareness, and how the data obtained from social listening can reveal social issues and possible ways to alleviate those issues.

Have you used Social Listening as a tool in your social research/ your development organization? Please do comment below and be sure to check out the other, and my future posts.

One comment

  1. Thank you Steph, this is very insightful and something that is not generally known (I personally was unaware of this tool).
    Social listening sounds like an interesting mechanism in the face of the noisiness in the digital realm (such as fake news!).

    Clodagh Geoghegan

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