Dr. Jeanette Castillo, FSU School of Communication assistant professor of digital media, coordinated a day of social media education featuring a series of presentations by Dr. Stuart Shulman on Jan. 18. Shulman is the current Director of the Quantitative Data Analysis Program for the University of Massachusetts. His start-up company, Texifter, LLC, of which he is CEO, analyzes large quantities of text for relevant data, with a focus on social media. Texifter’s applications are used by businesses daily to find patterns and consumer information in user-generated comments.
Shulman held three separate presentations at FSU throughout the day. The morning’s training session was designed for participants learning how to apply social media research tools that he developed to better understand Twitter users. About 20 doctoral students attended, each given free trial access to the DiscoverText software. Shulman discussed Twitter research projects, how interfaces can be programmed, and advice for coding searches.
Over 40 attendees filled the room for Shulman’s noon lecture on “Coding the Twittersphere.” The discussion was about how and why to gather, filter, and search human code to classify Twitter users. There are over 20,000 influential individuals and organizations using this medium, along with an increasing number of content producers. The data produced contains useful insights, but it is difficult to analyze without the use of specially-made software, such as DiscoverText. Other topics touched upon were the evolution of the Facebook page and the monetization of social media outlets with access to information from millions of users.
Towards the presentation’s end, there was time set aside for questions and answers from the speaker. A few CCI professors and doctoral students were able to exchange thoughts with Shulman.
John Marks, FSU assistant professor in Information Studies, warned of the danger of large companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, being in control of so much data. Shulman agreed that “it is problematic since their bottom line is money, but this is a product of a capitalist economy.”
Dr. Ulla Bunz, FSU School of Communication associate professor, brought up that “Digital content is very western-centric. When you study international issues, what you get and think is a worldwide view on a topic is actually not.” This led to the conversation of the limited access to Twitter by some populations, and the western bias this tends to give research found via social mediums.
Shulman recommended that you “begin studies knowing there will be limits to findings. By starting with restrictions in mind, you do not pretend they do not exist.” Examining social media and trying to establish trends works in the same way as other research: a survey, for example, can have many non-responders and still generate some valuable results. Shulman noted, researchers and students should be aware of limitations, but not feel completely restricted by them since important insights can still be uncovered.
Shulman’s final lecture, entitled “Fear and Loathing on the Social Campaign Trail,” focused on the use of analytical software to collect and resolve data on fears expressed during the 2012 Presidential Election. Taking the perspective of the voter, Shulman analyzed information from the final week of October to get an idea of main concerns of Twitter users as the election concluded.
