#Data4Good: Harnessing social insights to solve global development challenges
Social data has proven itself to be a powerful tool for brands hoping to better understand and connect with their audiences. It allows companies to capture consumer behaviours by identifying what’s important to people, what drives them, and what their needs are. But the possibilities for social listening don’t stop there. These tools and methodologies can be used to better understand contexts and conflicts, and help further international development goals.
Global Pulse: Mapping global Twitter conversations
Social media use is expanding in the developing world at an impressive rate. While most use social media to stay connected with friends and family, they also use it to comment on politics, to share health information, and to document their day-to-day realities. This digital transition has clear implications for development; people are speaking for themselves, changing our understanding of their realities and situations.
Social data can therefore enable us to improve access to services, to have early warning of crises, and gain real-time policy awareness and feedback.
This potential has been recognised by United Nations Global Pulse – a UN body built with the purpose of “harnessing big data for development and humanitarian action”. Global Pulse used social research to help inform the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals, creating a new agenda for global development. They also used Twitter data to develop a social media monitor, visualising key topics of conversation in specific countries over time – identifying regional priorities. With this data, Global Pulse built a dashboard, allowing anyone to track the top development priorities of each country, based on the opinions of citizens themselves.
Social data ensured that the next development agenda was dictated by the people.
UN Global Pulse: Identifying Twitter conversations from 2012 - present
The Global Pulse data lab has also been working on projects that use social data to
pre-empt crises, for example:
- Mining Twitter data to predict a food crisis in Indonesia. By tracking online conversations about the rising price of rice, officials were able to predict the consumer price index several weeks in advance.
- Using social media as an early indicator of increased unemployment in Ireland. Global Pulse used sentiment analysis to link mood-related conversation with official unemployment statistics. This gave policymakers a greater understanding of the issue and the ability to foresee a rise in joblessness. Social data bolstered unemployment statistics and added depth to them.
At Pulsar, we’ve also used social data to shine light on pressing global issues. In September 2015, after tracking conversations on the refugee crisis, we found that the death of Alan Kurdi changed the language used to discuss this issue. After the boy's image went viral the terminology that people used to describe the crisis switched from 'migrant' to 'refugee'. This study showed how one image played a significant role in shifting a global debate.
Social data enables us to take an organic and unfiltered dive into how people think and act. It can therefore do so much more than help us understand how people consume. Social data can shape the way that we approach pressing world issues and the way that we respond to them. The possibilities are limitless and the impact endless.
If you’re working in the development space and want to explore how social data can deliver impact, we’d love to hear from you. Send an email to [email protected].
