HAM_F_04 (Social) Media Observatory

Objective s/  Research Questions

This project will establish a (Social) Media Observatory (SMO) to fulfil five essential tasks within RISC:

1. the design and implementation of a technical infrastructure consisting of cloud-based virtual servers, a comprehensive database of social actors and organizations, as well as specially developed open-source scripts and freely accessible software packages, which will be used throughout the project period for (a) continuous and actor-related and (b) occasion- and case-related systematic observation of the media-based public (INFRA);
2. the development and maintenance of a German-language “handbook” in the form of a wiki that refers to existing data sets, tools, software packages, or similar items in the field of (social) media observation (DOKU);
3. the development of a training programme with regular biannual workshops for the collection and analysis of social media data (WORK);
4. the establishment of a contact and advice centre that supports the consortium partners in the preprocessing, analysis, and evaluation of (social) media data in relation to projects as required, for example by providing scheduled and project-based consultation hours  on demand (BERA);
5. the cooperation with external institutional partners (the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences [GESIS] and Social Science One) to ensure the secure, reliable, and long-term archiving of the (social) media data obtained within the consortium and thus to develop their potential for further use (ARCH).

Thus, the project does not pursue research questions of its own but has the task of providing data, tools, and competences to all interested projects of RISC in order to independently work on questions related to media-based publicity.

Thematic Reference to Social Cohesion

The project is based on the basic assumption that practices, discourses, and conflicts relevant to social cohesion are (also) reflected or articulated in mediated communication, both in journalistic content and in the new public spheres of social media. The analysis of corresponding texts, debates, and activities of social groups promises – especially in combination with other quantitative and qualitative survey methods (survey, interview, and experiment) – valuable findings, for example on the fragmentation and loss of solidarity or the representation of the diversity of actors and interests.

Therefore, the SMO will primarily develop tools and collect data in which, on the one hand, publicly negotiated topics and discourses (i.e. forms of collectively effective narration) and, on the other hand, social networks of relationships and practicesare articulated, particularly via metadata of the activity and networking of actors.