Mon, 07/12/2021
I’m Neil Rutledge, a Research Associate at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center. Part of my work is engaging with the talented faculty, fellows, and grant recipients who are a part of our work at the center, sharing their work and expertise with other scholars and the public.
As part of the Teach Me series, I sit down with these scholars to ask them about their work related to law and technology. In this installment of the Teach Me series, I talk with Valerie Jones, Associate Professor of Advertising & Public Relations at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln about her work creating the Public Insight Lab; work that we at the NGTC are excited to help support.
Dr. Jones, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions about your research. I saw that your work is related to the development of a “Public Insight Lab” at the University of Nebraska. Can you tell us a little bit about your vision for the Public Insight Lab?
The Public Insight Lab is an interdisciplinary hub for social media research and analysis to help faculty, students, and industry stakeholders explore, learn from, and engage with the public through social media. The lab will enable researchers to quickly access, harvest, analyze, and visualize real-time and historical social and traditional media data through the use of social listening platforms such as Sprinklr, as well as the skills and expertise of faculty.
What type of information/data do you envision the Public Insight Lab will help researchers obtain?
The Public Insight Lab can be particularly helpful for researchers to test hypotheses, using social media data as preliminary evidence, for example; and harvest data quickly and easily—without any specialized coding knowledge-- filtered by time, source, sentiment, and more, with just a few clicks. Our aim is to help researchers answer a variety of questions related to their research topics; for example, we might help provide them with information regarding:
- perceptions, misconceptions, and sentiment around an issue, policy, or research topic;
- key influencers, advocates or detractors around that issue or topic;
- engagement and experiences with that topic
- The five Ws: who cares, what they think or care about, when and where they are most concerned or engaged, and why, all of which can be dissected in wide variety of ways (by geography, gender, age, following, influence, and more).
What do you see as the role that information obtained from social media platforms can play in academic research?
Social media is often thought of as the world’s largest focus group. Citizens are putting more and more of their thoughts and feelings online for public display. The NGTC and Public Insight Lab can help interdisciplinary scholars, students, and stakeholders embrace new ways of exploring research questions and analyzing the ever-increasing torrent of data right in front of us, leveraging the giant sample size, availability of the data, and speed of accessing and collecting it. Social listening platforms such as Sprinklr aren’t a substitute for traditional academic research, but they can be a helpful supplement to that research, a powerful tool to use in pursuit of answers—as long as you know where to look.
Are there any misconceptions that you think the public or academics have about the value of social media as a tool for research that you wish you could correct?
Some people still think of social media as the place where people post what they had for lunch. There’s some of that (I had a burrito bowl, by the way, and it was a delight). But, like it or not, social media can and does have great influence. It can also help us understand how people think and feel, what people believe and where that information is coming from, and what others are experiencing in real time, and that can lead to more informed actions. What are misconceptions around the COVID-19 vaccine, where are they coming from, and how are they spreading? How supportive or accepting are consumers of cellular agriculture and alternative proteins, and how does that vary by location? How and where are droughts being experienced, and how does that relate to prior years? Who are the greatest influencers around new voting rights legislation? The list of possible research questions is endless, and we at the Public Insight Lab are excited to help researchers pursue them.
Tags: Interviews
