Social Media Analytics: Contemporary Topics and Techniques
By Aida Rahmattalabi
In the modern world, social media is becoming a powerful means of analyzing different user behaviors. In the session “Social Media Analytics: Contemporary Topics and Techniques,” three interesting talks summarized some of the recent results in this area.
The first talk was concerned with brand personality and how it influences messages both from brands and consumers. Like human personality, brand personality can be defined by a set of characteristics. In their study, the authors, Arnold Dongwoo Chung, Hyunsang Son, and Joshua Ryoo of the University of Texas at Austin, and Yoonhi Sung of the University of Texas at El Paso, showed the extent to which brand messages were congruent with consumer comments for each brand.
The next talk discussed the wealth of social media data and how it can be utilized to extract useful information. In particular, authors Young Eun Park of Colorado State University and Hyunsang Son of the University of Texas at Austin, showed how different sources of information—for example, text and image—can together reveal interesting trends such as the most recommended post, the most shared post, and so forth.
Finally, the last talk from Jisoo Ahn discussed how social media can be utilized in disaster situations. Indeed, social media plays a significant role, both as a platform for disaster information dissemination and to share warning messages. This last talk in particular, studied the contents that people tend to share or seek during disastrous situations.