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Citizen Engagement, Policy

How govts are making sense of social media

By Robin Hicks | 28 April 2010

Social media presents government with a headache-inducing glut of unstructured data from which it is difficult to make any sense. But as governments in Australia, Hong Kong and Europe reveal in interviews with FutureGov, analytics tools that trawl blogs and social networks are helping to test public sentiment and shape policy with increasing efficiency and effectiveness.

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Social media analytics tools are usually a less expensive and often more reliable way of finding out what the public is thinking and doing than more popular forms of research, such as surveys and polls. Highly sophisticated algorithms specialised in semantics can help government “find something it doesn’t know yet” from chatterings in the social space, said Matt Poelmans, Director, Citizenlink, Ministry of the Interior, in the Netherlands.

“One of the challenges of web 2.0 is the sheer volume of unstructured data that is published every minute. Even is 95 per cent isn’t of interest, the five per cent that is amounts to a bulk of information that is almost impossible to cope with,” he said. Which is why the Dutch government has tasked Citizenlink to develop so-called “Web Antennae”.

Unlike search engines, which look for “something you know”, Web Antennae crawl blogs, web traffic and social media to get “a sense of the meeting”, Poelmans explained. Social media analytics are becoming increasingly important in this regard, he added. “Last year, a public vaccination campaign for girls failed completely because the official information sent through traditional channels didn’t reach its audience and was contradicted by what was being said on social platforms.

The Department of Justice in the Australian state of Victoria is currently monitoring a portfolio of issues high on its policy agenda in social media, including water safety and bushfire preparedness, noted Patrick McCormick, the department’s Manager of Digital Engagement, Strategic Communication Branch. His department uses SM2/Alterian SMM software and the Bullseye agency. “Regular monthly reports present demographic audience data, identify the online environments they penetrate and summarise key dialogue, recommendations and insights.”

McCormick uses reports from analytics tools to keep stakeholders informed of what’s being said about government and key policy issues. The findings are circulated internally, helping communications managers develop community-oriented advertising campaigns, and demonstrate to executive management the impact and ROI of social media.

So will social media analytics replace traditional means of measuring public sentiment? According to McCormick, social media analytics will compliment mainstream media monitoring. “Social media monitoring provides another channel into the public pulse and helps us to paint a more complete picture of the media landscape overall,” he said.

Such tools help identify gaps in internal social media strategy, he added. “The speed and currency of social media can provide an early warning system such that one can ‘catch a spot fire before a blaze’, particularly as related to controversial topics or campaigns.”

But just how accurate are these tools? “Many measures are qualitative and still evolving but they are very useful indicators nonetheless,” said McCormick. “Existing tools already shed light on areas of public opinion that may not be represented by mainstream media . In the future we expect more detailed and quantitative analysis to be possible as the tools and technology become more robust.”

The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) in Hong Kong would not comment on the reliability or otherwise of social analytics, but told FutureGov that it is experimenting with various business analytics tools to aid its e-engagement efforts. Deputy GCIO Stephen Mak said: “I personally believe that, in measuring social media, the rigour should be similar to that in other channels as far as the scientific framework, the sampling base, and the authenticity of the sentiments expressed are concerned.”

Hong Kong government departments are currently considering whether or not they need these tools based on their need to engage stakeholders, Mak added.

Meanwhile vendors are launching “new and improved” social media analytics tools. Mark Chaves, Director, Media Intelligence Solutions at SAS, told FutureGov at the SAS Global Forum in Seattle that his company’s advanced data integration technology enables its customers to “clean” the data by creating rules that “filter out the stuff you don’t need.”

“It’s an efficient way of serving the public,” he added. “When you develop policy, do you want to do so in a vacuum? A great thing about social media is that it tells you more about how to improve the services you provide. You can explain your policies. And if you know where people are talking and what they are saying, you can use that information to drive traffic to government web sites.”