Social Media - Developing Understanding, Infrastructure & Engagement (Social Media Enhancement)

There is now a broad consensus that new forms of social data emerging from people's day-to-day activities on the Web (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) have the potential to transform the social sciences. However, there is also agreement that the current analytical techniques fall short of the standards required for academic research and policy making. Areas in which social media data have the potential to provide insights include: social order and civil society, politics and policy making, sentiment, commerce, health, information and sentiment diffusion, creativity and the arts.

In this proposal we outline the case for an enhancement to our existing funding for the RCUK dot.rural Digital Economy Hub (based at the University of Aberdeen) to support investigations into the challenges surrounding social media data and the social sciences. Aspects of the work will involve analysis of social media data in a number of contexts, including: transport disruption around the 2014 Commonwealth Games (Glasgow), news stories about Scottish independence and UK-EU relations, island communities in the Western Isles. Guided by insights from these case studies we will:

- develop a suite of software tools to support various aspects of data analysis and curation;
- provide guidance on ethical considerations surrounding analysis of social media data; and
- deliver training workshops for social science researchers.

Finally, researchers will attend a range of festivals (food, music and science) to engage the public on this important issue.

Key beneficiaries include:

1. Academic researchers who are considering use of social media data in their research plans.

2. Policy makers who have difficulty understanding the validity of findings from social media analytics;

3. Public transport operators and agencies who currently struggle to develop coherent social media strategies;

4. Market research organisations who would benefit from more sophisticated analysis, including perceived pros and cons, identification of claims that hold widespread support, and arguments that are found to be convincing;

5. Developers of tools for social media analytics;

6. Members of the public who may be frustrated by the ways in which social media are used by commercial organisations and agencies.

How will they benefit?
1. Through the availability of training events, ethical guidelines, case studies and data (where possible).

2. Via a series of case studies we will highlight the potential and pitfalls of social media analysis, and will share these experiences with a range of academic and non-academic audiences.

3. By harnessing the potential for social media to be used constructively both as a means to develop more effective intervention strategies and as a platform for public communication, transport operators and agencies will enhance the effectiveness of their operations as well as influencing public perception of their sector.

4. Argumentation mining software offers clear benefits to policy makers and industry sectors such as market research. At present, sentiment (or opinion) mining tools, which identify positive and negative opinions on topics of interest, enjoy widespread success. Companies use sentiment analysis over social media routinely to understand public opinion about their products. Argumentation mining would allow more sophisticated forms of analysis.

5. Through the development of new prototype tools (for argument mining, qualitative modelling, dataset annotation) we will advance the state of the art in aspects of social media analytics, and data management.

6. The public will have the opportunity to engage directly with the social media data agenda and to influence both the direction of the research and its outcomes; in particular, ethical guidelines will emerge that reflect public concerns.