Digital Data and Methods - RE-SIT EXAM

Introduction

This course will teach you new methods to collect and analyze data from social media and the internet. New tools of analysis will help you uncover patterns in big data, and allow you to construct meaningful descriptions of stakeholders in the form of personas.

Deriving insights is an increasingly important success factor in today's communication environment. Measuring, analyzing, and implementing data into decision-making processes create effective and efficient PR and marketing campaigns. With societal issues increasingly occupying management's agenda, communication departments are increasingly tasked to gather and develop insights into complex problems. On the agency side, value is increasingly created through creative and strategic planning, which itself is dependent on creating insights.

In this course, the general objective is to provide students studying digital communication and marketing the adequate competence to use these insight- and data-driven methods/tools. Data is collected from online sources such as social media, blogs, forums and websites. This will give students the ability to understand audiences, to become skilled in developing persuasive and customized messaging, to select the best communication channels for messages, and ultimately, to achieve optimal results. The emphasis of the class will be on application and interpretation of the results, providing input for making real life business and communication strategy decisions. We will focus less on the mathematical and statistical properties of the techniques used to produce these results, and more on the methods used in analysis of the data itself.

Course content

1. Introduction: Digital data and personas

You will learn about types of digital data and the associated opportunities and challenges these data present. You will also be familiarized with personas, the technique we will employ in presenting our findings.

2. The explorative phase in data-driven analysis

Data-driven analysis presents different challenges than traditional data collection. You will become cognizant of, and actively avoid, these weaknesses and obstacles inherent to this methodology. 

3. Data collection

You will learn to collect data from social media and the limits there of. Data from blogs, forums, and other sources will also be covered.

4. Analyses

In this part of the course, you will become acquainted with and work with practical tools. This will allow you to uncover how your topic of interest is discussed online and in social media, who the influencers are, what the networks look like, and what the trends are.

5. Presentation of insights

You will learn how to effectively create and present you findings visually in a convincing way while using personas.