Understanding Social Media Monitoring

It is widely accepted that social media permeate more and more of our daily lives. So do social media data: personalized online advertisements such as those seen on Facebook, journalism which is increasingly dependent on and driven by data, and the rise of systems which measure our digital reputations, such as Klout and PeerIndex, are just some examples of current uses of social media data. A number of recent high profile cases have sparked public interest in what happens to social media data once it has been shared, such as the US college student whose Christian parents became aware of his homosexuality when his association with a gay choir appeared on his Facebook timeline (Wolford 2012).

Alongside the analysis and manipulation of data by social media mega-platforms like Facebook, intermediary companies which monitor, interpret and analyse social media data are emerging across the globe, offering a broad range of social media 'intelligence' services, including monitoring the social media activities of audiences and 'influencers' in order to gauge and respond to public opinion. Such analysis involves the deployment of specific methods, such as sentiment analysis, opinion mining, social network analysis, machine learning and natural language processing. These social media monitoring methods, like methods of all kinds, 'are shaped by the social world in which they are located [and] in turn help to shape that social world' (Law 2010: 2).

Given these phenomena - the spread of social media data analysis, the growth of public concern about what happens to social media data, and the role played by methods in the shaping of the social world - it is vital that empirical research into social media monitoring (SMM) is carried out, to ask questions about how social media data are gathered and constructed, what they can be taken to mean, to what ends they are deployed, who gets access to them and how their analysis is regulated (boyd and Crawford 2011). My research does this through a focus on the intermediary SMM industries. It approaches SMM from a number of perspectives, in order to paint a more complete picture than exists to date of the SMM industries and their social and economic significance. These include:

> the perspectives of people working in these industries (How do people working in social media monitoring think about and work with/around core issues such as privacy and surveillance?);

> users' perspectives (What do social media users think about the monitoring of their social media activity?);

> a regulation perspective (How could and should the social media monitoring industries be governed?);

> and the perspective of the data itself (What happens to social media data? How does it get used? What impact, if any, does it have?).

Drawing together textual analysis of company websites and other related documents, interviews and focus group discussions with social media users, social media monitoring professionals and key regulation actors, the research will be published as a monograph entitled Social Media Monitoring: social media data analysis and the production of social life.

Within the proposed project, international dialogues about the importance of social media data analysis as an object of investigation for media studies will be initiated, through a series of visits, an international conference and a special issue of a journal. The research also has broader, transformative potential beyond media studies, because the critical approach that it adopts, which moves beyond and counterbalances celebratory accounts of the democratic possibilities of social media, is relevant to other disciplines impacted by the ubiquity of social media. As social media monitoring also matters to non-academic audiences, the research findings will be discussed outside of academia, through talks and online dissemination, to two key audiences: the social media monitoring industries themselves and social media users.

The two main non-academic beneficiaries of the research are social media monitoring industry workers and social media users.

The project aims to have an impact on how social media monitoring gets done. In order to achieve this aim, industry professionals will be engaged in a number of ways. The research and findings will be formally disseminated at the main industry event for this sector, Social Media Week, which takes place twice yearly in multiple cities across the globe. I will attend the London conference in February 2015 at which I will run an event focused on disseminating the research findings, as well as networking throughout the event in order to raise awareness of the research. I will focus specifically on aspects of the research relating to social media users' views of social media monitoring and possible approaches to regulating the sector, as research thus far indicates that there is sector interest in these areas. I will also disseminate findings through relevant online spaces which focus on social media monitoring. These will be specified closer to the time of dissemination, as new spaces frequently emerge. At present, appropriate spaces include the blog Monitoring Social Media (http://www.monitoring-social-media.com/) and the blog on the Econsultancy website (http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog). Social media monitoring sector professionals are also collaborators in the aspects of the research mentioned above, users' views and regulation. This collaboration is another way of engaging them. The intention in engaging some sector workers in this research and in communicating findings to others is twofold. First, that by raising awareness of users' views about social media monitoring, sector workers will take these views on board, and approach their work attentive to users' concerns. The second, in relation to regulation, is to stimulate interest in the governance of the sector, in ensuring that standards are identified and maintained, and to initiate action in this regard.

I also intend to disseminate the research findings amongst social media users. Initially this will be done through a series of talks with the most prolific users of social media: teenagers. Six-ten talks will be given to sixth-form students in schools; initial discussions about these talks are underway with schools in cities in the north of England (Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester). The aim of these talks is to raise awareness amongst users of what happens to social media content once it has been shared. This may impact on the ways in which these regular social media users share their personal information. On visits to schools I will also explore the relationship between my research findings and relevant curricula, and the possible future development of related teaching resources. Such resources could raise awareness of what happens to social media content amongst a wider audience of users, with the same potential impacts. These discussions are proposed as an exploratory exercise within the scope of this project, which may lead to a future project focused on the production of teaching resources and/or input into curriculum development.

In addition to these primary non-academic beneficiaries, the general public may also benefit from the research. As the research addresses an issue of contemporary concern (that is, what happens to social media data), it provides excellent opportunities for media coverage, through which the research findings may be disseminated and increased awareness of the phenomenon of social media monitoring may result.