Anstead Explores How Social Media is Changing the Way We Think about Public Opinion
During his presentation at the Center for Media, Data and Society at the School of Public Policy of CEU on May 14, Nick Anstead explained what prompted his interest in the impact that social media analytics has had on public opinion. Anstead, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that his interest in this topic started with the “two-screen phenomenon” – people watching TV and commenting on it in real time.
As Anstead observed, the rise of social media has prompted a broader discussion about public opinion and the complexity of its nature. Is it something that exists and that pollsters measure, or is public opinion something that pollsters create in the process of measuring it? Anstead identified three types of public opinion of social media: anecdotal (quoting random tweets), trending (assuming that topics that are trending in Twitter are also “trending” more generally), and semantic polling that measures the reaction to specific individuals and/or events.
Anstead noted that although social media data is increasingly being equated with public opinion, at least some traditional pollsters say that this is problematic for several reasons. First, it is non-representative as Twitter users, especially those commenting on political issues, tend to be younger and wealthier than the general public; in addition, social media has not been successfully used as a predictive tool. Anstead also noted that using social media to measure public opinion assumed that public opinion was nothing more than the sum of individual opinions. Another concern was that social media is being manipulated by political parties and movements. “But,” Anstead said, “even if it’s a managed space, it’s still worth studying, and still significant.”
Despite its shortcomings, Anstead said that social media was “here to stay” and “big data will play a part in political research in the future.” Social media-based analysis could be a useful tool. However, a different theoretical approach is needed. There is still value, said Anstead, in looking at older conceptions of public opinion.