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H2020Staff exchange2019–2024

RISE_SMA · RISE Social Media Analytics

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2019-01-01 → 2024-10-31
EU contribution
€1,168,400
Participants
10
Scheme
MSCA-RISE

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

RISE Social Media Analytics

RISE_SMA at a glance: RISE_SMA creates an interdisciplinary, international network combining world-leading scholars and excellent practitioners to enable intensive knowledge sharing and to develop solutions for advancements in social media analytics (SMA). Social media have become an important part of daily life of millions and influences the way people get and share information. Advanced theoretical approaches and methods for analyzing social media data are especially relevant for the two areas addressed in RISE_SMA: (1) society and (2) crisis communication. In recent years, communication in social media has been shown to have a massive impact on society, and particularly on citizen’s decision-making processes, enabling new forms of public discourse and information dissemination but also challenging societal cohesion by supporting the rapid dissemination of ‘fake news’ and other unsubstantiated information, by human actors as well as bots. The development and deployment of more advanced analytical frameworks for the study of social media and their uses in public communication is therefore now one of the most pressing challenges for researchers working at the nexus of media and communication studies and computer science, and the present project directly addresses that challenge. RISE_SMA contributes to research and practical solutions by focusing on methods and instruments as well as theories of social media analytics by referring to the underlying social media analytics elements of ‘roles and actors’ as well as ‘topics and dynamics’. Here, RISE_SMA will address and make significant advances in two areas: (1) we develop a common theoretical model that helps to explain and predict user behavior in social media; (2) we focus on the most relevant methods and models to improve them by adapting them to the specific characteristics of social media data. As a result of both this, we develop open source software tools with graphical user interfaces that are accessible to researchers and practitioners.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The purpose of RISE_SMA is to create an interdisciplinary, international network of excellent scholars and practitioners in the field of social media analytics (SMA). Given the ubiquity of social media, and the immense amount of new social media data continuously created, there is a growing need to derive meaningful insights from this “big” social data by combining different methods. Application areas range from crisis communication and political communication to marketing research and customer acquisition for businesses. The need for more interdisciplinary and international cooperation is especially evident in the two focus areas of RISE_SMA: crisis communication and the societal impact of social media. First, understanding the communication activities unfolding amongst ordinary citizens, and communicating crucial information to them in a timely and coordinated manner during a crisis is a prerequisite for the effective mitigation of its consequences. Practitioners in the field would benefit from more intensive collaboration with researchers, and researchers would benefit from better understanding the needs of decision-makers. At the same time, the wider impact of social media on society is still unclear. Recent advancements in technology have led to the emergence of new communication patterns; their impact and meaning have yet to be understood. On the one hand social media have been highlighted for enabling new forms of citizen engagement that strengthens civic participation at local and national levels, but on the other hand social media have been criticised for enabling the emergence of disconnected echo chambers in which political propaganda can circulate unchallenged. Hence, there is an urgent need for comprehensive concepts as well as methods which exist independent of particular current platforms and applications. Based on research in these fields, practical recommendations need to be derived and technical solutions need to be developed.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • UNIVERSITAET POTSDAM · PotsdamCoordinatorGermany
  • ASSOCIACAO ANTONIO VIEIRA · SAO LEOPOLDOBrazil
  • KRISTIANSAND KOMMUNE · KRISTIANSAND SNorway
  • QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY - QLD QUT · BrisbaneAustralia
  • THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY · SydneyAustralia
  • UNIVERSITAET DUISBURG-ESSEN · EssenGermany
  • UNIVERSITAS PAJAJARAN · SumedangIndonesia
  • UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN · LeidenNetherlands
  • UNIVERSITETET I AGDER · KristiansandNorway
  • VIRTIMO AG · BERLIN CHARLOTTENBURGGermany

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union