Using Social Media Listening to Explore

Perceptions of Universities

Dr. Nicole Olynk Widmar

Department of Agricultural Economics

Some background and context… • Dr. Nicole Olynk Widmar

• Professor & Associate Head in the Dept of Agricultural Economics; Graduate Program Chair

• Originally from

Long Island, NY

• Farm Business Management & Production Economics On-farm decision making Integrating consumer preferences for

production practices into production decisions

• Interdisciplinary work

• A.A.S. Alfred State (An Sci)

• B.S. Cornell (An Sci)

• M.S. Michigan State (Ag Econ)

• Ph.D. Michigan State Ag Econ (Farm Mgt)

2

What is big data? • Is it bigger than a breadbox?

How important?

What about big data about US?

The Scale!• Attendance over 137,902,000

• Walt Disney World Resort (Orlando) encompasses 30,500 acres, making it approximately the same size as San Francisco (or 2 Manhattan islands).

• 200,000 guests in Orlando hotel space at a single time

• Nearly 300 Walt Disney World buses transport guests around the Vacation Kingdom 3rd largest in Florida behind Miami and Jacksonville.

• More than 75 million Cokes are consumed each year at Walt Disney World Resort along with 13 million bottles of water.

Ongoing Work @ Purdue

• Individual companies OWN the data they generate

• “The Internet” is (largely) public domain And it’s a Big Data playground

Disclaimer

• All data displayed is preliminary in nature Please do not cite; demonstration purposes only

• Significant investment in “tuning” each topic – and -University, although continued efforts are needed

How WE use social media data• Valentine’s/Galentine’s Day = proof of concept

• #DisneyWorld

• #SeaWorld

• #Eggs

• #Agribusiness

• #Mosquitoes Epidemiology collaborations Goefencing! Miami ? Florida ?

• #Universities … natural brand mgt/public perceptions extension

You can start crossing into a gray area of

general versus specificIndustry versus Individual

Social Listeningis the process of monitoring, segmenting and analyzing conversations across social media in order to measure brand sentiment, the effectiveness of social campaigns, and to fuel content creation for target audiences.

Credit: Netbase, 2018

Perceptions of Universities • Lots of possible comparisons

Land Grant Big 10 Division I R1

• Starting point – Begin at Home: Purdue University

Seek to Learn …• What is the net sentiment?

Positive minus negative posts

• What drives sentiment? Does it change across Universities? Does it change over time? Can we (or are we) impacting sentiment?

• Fundamentally, what is our “actual presence” on the Internet?

Purdue University

Two Year Overview

Purdue University

Two Years: Filtering “Acceptance” related terms

Comparisons Across Universities

• University of Illinois

• Indiana University

• University of Iowa

• University of Minnesota

• University of Michigan

• Michigan State University

• University of Maryland

• University of Nebraska

• Northwestern University

• Ohio State University

• Penn State University

• Rutgers University

• University of Wisconsin

• University of CA - Berkeley

• Georgia Tech University

• UT Austin

• Texas A&M University

Starting in Aggregate

Behavior Varies

• Day of the Week

• Time of the Day

In Summary• Net Sentiment Drivers Make sense but … not always predictable

• Variable sentiment AND drivers across Universities Important for brand and perceptions

management

• To be built upon … Geofencing – Where? Given the importance of sports for some

Universities – where is the sentiment coming from physically?

See you on the Internet …

For more information contact Dr. Nicole Olynk Widmar nwidmar@purdue.edu

Join the conversation on Twitter @ProfWidmar and @Courtney_Bir