The Social Media Observatory (SMO) enables the systematic and continuous observation of the journalistic and social media public. Therefore, it provides a monitoring and data infrastructure that can be used to capture, analyse and visualise debates in social media.
The SMO is a central organisational unit of the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC) with the task of providing all interested RISC projects with data, tools and expertise to enable them to independently address issues related to the media-based public sphere.
The monitoring infrastructure established in the first funding phase of the RISC (2020-2024) will be consolidated and expanded to capture, analyse and visualise actors and discourses in social media platforms and journalistic media offerings. This is done, on the one hand, by setting up and maintaining cloud infrastructure, code and software, and, on the other hand, by collecting and providing basic data, such as the ‘Database of Public Speakers’ (DBÖS) and large-scale collections of network data from various social media platforms.
The SMO also offers target group-specific workshops for beginners and advanced users, as well as for RISC projects, and shares the knowledge gained in a wiki-based knowledge platform. Among other things, a guide for research ethics in social media research (SOCRATES; Rau/Münch/Asli 2021) was published there.
In cooperation with other RISC sections, the SMO investigates the dynamics of polarization in digital public spheres and the transformation of gender discourses in social media.
The SMO works with data journalists from various media houses to support their work and to prepare its own findings for the general public.
- To the Social Media Oberservatory‘s own project page
- To the project description on the RISC website
Information on the First Funding Phase
As the central organizational unit of the RISC, the SMO fulfilled five main tasks in the first funding phase:
- The conception and implementation of a technical infrastructure consisting of cloud-based virtual servers, a comprehensive database of social actors and organizations and specially developed open source scripts and freely accessible software packages, which will be used throughout the project period for the a) continuous and stakeholder-related and b) systematic monitoring of media-based publicity on a case-by-case basis (INFRA);
- The creation and maintenance of a German-language “handout” in the form of a wiki that refers to existing data sets, tools, software packages or similar in the field of “(social) media observation” (DOKU);
- The development of a training program with regular biannual workshops on the collection and analysis of social media data (WORK);
- The establishment of a contact and advice center that supports the consortium partners in the pre-processing, analysis and evaluation of (social) media data on a project-related basis as required, e.g. through scheduled and project-based consultation hours (BERA);
- Collaboration with external institutional partners (GESIS, Social Science One) to ensure the secure, reliable and long-term archiving of the (social) media data collected within the consortium and thus tap into its reuse potential (ARCH).
