Are you planning to be near Brisbane, Australia on February 17? Then why not join Annie Pettit for a full day of Social Media Research training with the Australian Market and Social Research Summer School program!

1. 2013 Summer School Workshops
2. Summer School Learning Methodology
3. The Summer School Venue – QT Hotel
4. Travelling to the Gold Coast
5. The Summer School Dinner @ BAZAAR
6. Summer School Specials

For a full outline of the workshops and information on the presenters, click on the links in the table below.

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If you’ve tried social media listening research in the past, you’ve been limited to basic types of analyses such as frequencies and mean sentiment scores. This case study demonstrates how advanced statistical techniques can be applied to social media data to learn more about perceptions of vehicle brands and features. We will focus on regression and factor analysis to better understand how consumers group brands of cars and features of cars. We will also show how these groups differ based on the gender of the social media commenter. You need not have advanced understanding of factor analysis to learn from this webinar, just advanced curiosity about analyzing social media data.

You can see the slides here, or even better watch the full 30 minute presentation here.

Read what our viewers said!

@lovestatsThanks for the great webinar. What’s the biggest obstacle to using SM research facing the industry right now? #RNwebinars #mrx

— Z. W. Bennett (@ZWBennett) January 9, 2013

@lovestats Nice webinar. Your initial stepwise slide with 10 jillion variables made my hair fall out, but I recovered. #mrx

— Mike Donatello (@mikedonatello) January 9, 2013

Great information @lovestats!! I enjoyed learning more about Conversition and how it works with social media #RNwebinars #MRX

— Grace Hughston (@GraceHughston) January 9, 2013

An exceptionally clear & understandable description of the several analysis. Kudos Annie @lovestats #RNwebinars#mr

— Direct Resource (@direct_resource) January 9, 2013

How many of your friends have taken to Facebook or Twitter to moan about the terrible symptoms of the flu? If not your friends, you’ve certainly seen posts from many other people.

Social media is the perfect place to track the flu and determine whether you should drive in your car by yourself or risk taking the bus with 50 other potentially infectious people.

We collected a sample of data from hundreds of thousands of people mentioning the flu to determine just that. As you can see, last December saw an average of 900 mentions per day. This December saw an average of just 700 mentions per day. Looks like there are fewer sick people this time around!

However, if you look at the trend within December last year, you’ll see that it seems to decrease over the month. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for this December as mentions of the flu are slowly but surely increasing.

Let’s hope that January and February of this year don’t show the overwhelming illness spikes that last year did!

Note: Click on the chart itself once and then a second time to see it full size

Sadly, 2012 saw several devastating shootings in the US. Two in particular struck a cord due to the number of victims.

First, on July 20 in Aurora, 12 people were killed and 58 people were injured at a screening of the new Batman movie. Second, on December 14, 26 people were killed (including 20 kindergarten children and 6 teachers) at a school in Newtown.

Both of these terrible events generated massive outrage and calls for gun control in social media. In July, this peaked at nearly 20 000 daily mentions though interest fizzled after about a month. And now, after the recent shooting, social media mentions peaked at more than 60 000 daily calls for gun control, a threefold increase.

Will interest fizzle after just weeks again? And how long will it take to hash out the gun control/gun rights debate?

Method: Sample of 500 000 social media comments from 2012 mentioning gun control or gun rights.

Have no fear!

If you were unable to attend the NewMR festival, all of the sessions will soon be available as recordings on the NewMR website.

Annie Pettit was one of the speakers on training day and you will find the recording of her session there. Below are her slides.

Back in June, we were delighted to be asked to speak with the MRIA about social media and privacy at the Canadian House of Commons. It’s good to know the Canadian government takes these issues seriously as you can see in the thank you note. We look forward to more discussions on the development of policies.

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Dear Ms. Pettit,

On behalf of the whole NDP Caucus, we would like to thank you for your presence and insight at ETHI committee during the study on Social Media and the protection of personal information.

New Democrats believe in the ability of social media and the platform of Web 2.0 to enhance connectedness, democratic expression and education in society. The social media platforms of our age, developed and hosted by worldwide companies such as Facebook and Google, offer unprecedented new opportunities to enrich the human experience.

As paradigms shift, Parliamentarians have an obligation to study all sides of new realities with an eye to the collective interests of Canadians. It is through this lens that the NDP members of ETHI committee requested a study into the protection of personal information in an age of big data and social media.

As an expert witness in this field, offering a uniquely Canadian perspective on a transnational phenomenon, your testimony at committee has contributed to a deepening understanding of this rapidly evolving and often highly technical issue-area. As you know, this is the first time a study of this kind has taken place in Canada, and the recommendations flowing out of the report will inform public policy for years to come.

Once again, we thank you for your valuable testimony at ETHI committee and your service to Canadians. We look forward to future collaboration as our Official Opposition continues to build its public-interest policies in the digital age.

Sincerely,

Charmaine Borg
Députée | Member of Parliament
Porte-parole des enjeux numériques |  Digital Affairs Critic

You really can’t do any better than this.

No funding to attend conferences?
Not possible to get time away from the office or from the kids?
Worried about only liking 3 out of 20 sessions at conferences?

Well, how about a conference where you can pick and choose which sessions to attend WHILE you’re at work, WITHOUT missing work, WITHOUT missing bed-time stories, geared to your time zone, and for a price you can definitely afford.

The NewMR festival is right around the corner and it’s just for you. Lots of great sessions, lots of great speakers (Can we include Annie here?), and the price is perfect at pay what you can afford. Help the festival cover the technology/recording/backup costs with a much appreciated donation.

Register for the training day on Monday December 3rd to learn about MROCs, Qualitative Analysis, Latend Class Analysis, Behavioural Economics, Mobile Research, Discourse Analysis, Gamification, Social Media Research (that’s us!), and Cluster Analysis.

Or, register for the main stage on Wednesday December 5th to learn about Socialized Research, MR Talent, and more from great speakers like Mark Earls (I’ll have what she’s having), and Tom Ewing.

We’ll see you there!

Excerpt from a piece I wrote for Research Live.
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The best market research reports contain verbatim quotes from the research participants. These quotes let us really dig into the brains of consumers with more clarity and specificity than can be obtained from aggregated survey data.

In traditional research, the quotes taken from surveys, focus groups or interview results can never be associated with individual people because there are no names attached to the verbatims. As researchers, we pride ourselves on the anonymity we provide our research participants because it allows them to be completely open and honest with us. But when it comes to social media research results, it’s a completely different story. Any verbatims that are pulled from social media and copied directly into a research report can be easily traced back to the original author.

At the recent IJMR Research Methods Forum held in London, I shared just such an example with the audience – so let me share that story with you now. It started with a research project about BT, a telecoms service provider. In the research report, a verbatim was copied directly, without any masking, and without any individual attribution, from social media.

What happens next? Well, you’ll just have to read to find out.

We were delighted to be asked to keynote at the recent IJMR research methods forum in London. In a fabulous setting rich with history, we shared our perspective on a relatively brand new research method. We showed just how detrimental the effects can be when standards are cast aside as well as when standards go too far. If you have any questions about the presentation, do get in touch with us. We can talk for hours about these things!

Debate #3 has passed and we are in full gallop towards the November US presidential election. It’s a virtual horse race now, the two candidates neck and neck. Obama and Romney no longer have time to horse around.

All bad jokes aside, here’s how the two candidates stand after debate #3. Romney has taken the lead, whether temporarily or permanently. Only time will tell.