Facebook Offers New Windows Into Social Conversation

Facebook is releasing two new search tools on Monday designed to give news organizations — and potentially, marketers — more insights into the real-time social conversation occurring on Facebook, particularly around television shows, big news and sporting events. One of the new tools will allow news organizations to use keywords […] Read more »

Twitter doesn’t have pollsters running scared

Excuse the pun, but the polling world is all “atwitter” about a University of Indiana professor’s claim that the social media platform Twitter will “undermine the polling industry” and that analyzing social media conversations will put campaign pollsters “out of work.” … Pushback from the polling world has been swift […] Read more »

#FF Polling

There’s a new study out purporting to show that Twitter mentions are just as good as polling in predicting elections. I’m skeptical, and regardless of the study’s findings, the truth is that good survey research—whether for campaigns, news organizations, or academic research—does far more than predict winners. [cont.] Jonathan Bernstein, […] Read more »

No, You Can’t Predict US Congressional Election Outcomes with Tweet Shares: But That Doesn’t Mean You Shouldn’t Try

A group of sociologists at Indiana University recently claimed to have shown that “tweets predict elections.” The research looks at the proportion of tweets during the 3 months preceding the 2010 election mentioning either the democratic or republican candidate in a house race that mentioned the Republican candidate, and uses […] Read more »