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By Erik Sonne & Liselotte Brandstrup

More than half of the world’s population use social media. In line with the increasing popularity, interest in analyzing social media data has also grown. Do you work with social media data? Then keep reading.

What is social media analytics?
Social media analytics is a subset of data analytics that studies social media users' actions, clicks, and responses with a view to gauging interest, spotting trends, and improving offerings.

Key techniques in social media analytics include social listening, cluster analysis, data visualisation, behavioural analysis, and segmentation. Key measurements in social media analytics include monitoring followers, reviewing post clicks, and tracking page likes, impressions, page views, post reaches, engagements, actions on the page, and page previews.
 

Try out the Social Media Analytics tool
Social Media Analytics is a brand new social media tool from GlobalData Explorer, an important market research database available from CBS Library. You will find Social Media Analytics embedded within the GlobalData Explorer platform (Click Databases in the top menu).  

The Social Media Analytics tool allows you to analyse in depth all critical trends that are emerging on social media platforms around current affairs, industry events, companies, sectors, and more. Social Media Analytics covers X (formerly known as Twitter) and Reddit. You can filter your search results by timeline, geography, contributor type, company, sector, source (Twitter and Reddit), sentiment, and hashtag.

Go to Global Data Explorer

Check out the Social Media Analytics tool

Written by Lene Janussen Gry

Are you part of the academic community on Twitter (now X)? Recent changes to the platform are affecting the academic social media arena and altmetrics tools.

Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform Twitter (now X) has brought in changes that affect the academic community, both in terms of where academic news and publications are shared and discussed, and now also in terms of altmetrics.

ALTMETRICS: ‘Alternative article-level metrics’ are metrics based on a research article’s mentions as harvested
from social media platforms, news media, and policy documents, Twitter having been one of the main providers.
The main altmetrics tools are altmetric.com (by Digital Science) and PlumX metrics (by Elsevier).

Elsevier recently announced that its altmetrics tool PlumX would discontinue all Twitter (X) metrics as of August 31^st 2023, the stated reason being: “changes in market conditions” (plumanalytics.com, 31 August 2023).

Altmetric.com has announced that they are “observing ongoing developments with the platform closely”. They are still tracking tweets as usual but are “working on a number of scenarios as to how we might adjust to any developments that may occur in the future” (altmetric.com, 8 June 2023).

A large number of academic Twitter users have already fled the platform or are planning/considering doing so due to dissatisfaction with recent changes to the platform, the most problematic of which are discussed here: Social media has changed – Will academics catch up?).

Some have moved on to alternative platforms, including Mastodon, Threads, Spoutible etc., and many are, of course, still hanging on to Twitter(X), perhaps simultaneously maintaining a presence on other platforms, to be able to keep up with their peers. So far, former Twitter users have sought out different alternatives – and there is no consensus on where the “new Twitter” is.

Elsevier has not made it clear whether they will harvest mentions from other social media platforms instead, and altmetric.com are still monitoring developments, as mentioned.

The CBS Library newsletter will keep you posted on future changes. If you have questions or comments on this matter, please contact Lene Janussen Gry.

Written by Lene Hald

Behind every research publication lies many hours of hard work and, as a researcher, you will most likely want to see the results of that work reach an audience as wide as possible. Dissemination of your research can lead to new collaborations, a higher number of citations, and a greater impact overall. The question is, how and where do you best promote your research and yourself as a researcher? Although there is no definitive answer, below you will find a few tips that might serve as inspiration.
 

Making yourself and your research visible
Today, it seems like there are endless platforms and academic social networks that you can use, and it is impossible to be present and active on all platforms. In a Nature article, Antony Williams, himself a researcher, offers this piece of advice for fellow researchers:

“…choose two or three social-media platforms, invest the time to get them set up, and then spend perhaps two hours a month keeping them current. If nothing else, he says, build a LinkedIn profile as an online CV, claim and update an ORCID ID, and log peer-review activities on Publons.com.”
 

Tips on how to ‘supercharge’ your LinkedIn profile

How to create an ORCID ID and import your publications

Another way to make yourself and your area of research visible is to contribute to The Conversation, an independent news outlet that is sometimes picked up by big media. For an example of an article authored by two CBS researchers, click here. Check out how to become an author right here.

When it comes to promoting research publications, Twitter is always mentioned, and it can indeed be a great tool. If you use Twitter, you may find https://hashtagify.me useful when trying to find the right Twitter hashtags. Another tip: Remember to include the DOI of the research output when you tweet, just to make sure it is identifiable.

Other resources that might inspire you:

How to increase the visibility of your research? 6 steps

Top tips for telling the world about your research

“The A to Z of social media for academia”

If you have any questions about specific platforms, please do not hesitate to reach out.

By Mette Bechmann

Journal, author and article level metrics are undergoing change these years, and PlumX is an alternative method of counting how people are engaging with research. Moving away from traditional article citation counts, PlumX captures many other types of document exposure as well, from news mentions to likes, tweets, and Mendeley captures, all of which are indications of the level of interest in the document.

With every reference in Scopus, you will find a PlumX “flower” in the upper right hand corner. By clicking the “flower”, you open the full overview of captured metrics.

The green petal “Usage” records the immediate interest by counting clicks and views and, in the case of books, library holdings. Moving clockwise round the “flower”, next up is “Captures” which tracks any putting-aside of the document for later use by counting bookmarks and favourites. “Mentions” counts appearances in blog posts and news media, and as links in Wikipedia. “Social media” interest is captured by counting Facebook likes and shares, tweets and re-tweets, as well as Google +1. Finally, “Citations” counts mostly traditional academic citations.

Kilde: https://blog.scopus.com/posts/plumx-metrics-now-on-scopus-discover-how-others-interact-with-your-research

This way of quantifying interest in a document is still in its infancy but you still might find it useful to explore. We will keep an eye on how it develops in the future and keep you posted.