Information Seeking on Twitter and its Relevance on Market Research on a New Product
Introduction
The chosen research scenario is information gathering on social media. Social media information consists of raw insights that are gathered from individuals on a social platform. Information gathered on social media shows how various individuals interact with different types of information. For instance, they indicate how people engage with certain content online. Information on social media is mainly raw and unstructured as it includes likes, comments, shares, mentions including pictures, videos and audio files. Social media is important because it provides information on which types of networks are most influential to the public opinion, which type of content leads to more interaction and the level of engagement that most people on social platform choose to engage with (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2013). With this information, the platforms provide an insight on decisions that can be made that will bring the most influence among people interacting with social platforms. When it comes to product promotion, social media can provide relevant information on how a particular audience feels about a new product. At the same time, it can provide insight such as how many people have approximately interacted with the product and their experience with it (Fischer and Reuber, 2011). Although raw data pints such as likes and mentions are important, it is through deeper insights and analysis that a complete guide on how individuals interact with a concept that solid information is gathered. For instance, when it comes to certain topics such as creating public awareness of healthy methods of losing weight, then raw data is difficult to provide a conclusive analysis on how people feel about the concept. It requires a tracking of these metrics and the level of interaction that they gain to establish a pattern and get information on how the public views the concept of methods of weight loss. The chosen social media platform in this case is twitter. This is because twitter not only allows for the sharing of information, it also analyses the interaction levels of various posts and give an analysis of important metric data. With this information, one can track the interaction levels of a post and how certain individuals relate to the concept. The metric data on twitter also allows users to view the interaction of their posts from start to end. With this information, twitter is an excellent social media platform for information seeking because it not only provides raw data points such as likes and retweets but also ranking of levels of interactions using elements such as hashtags to show the most trending topics (Bruns and Stieglitz, 2014). Twitter allows for interaction of a product through keywords and hashtags. It also allows polls. This information is relevant because when analyzed it can provide a step by step analysis on how an audience initially becomes a product customer and their experience with the product. The platform also groups the topics based on location and user preferences. The research proposed is based on information seeking on twitter and its relevance to market research on a new product.
Data Collection Approach
The chosen data sampling strategy is systemic sampling. This is because this type of data sampling is used in real time (Ghermandi and Sinclair, 2019). Twitter interactions are constantly changing. In order to get accurate data, it is important to collect data on a real time basis. Unlike other types of data sampling strategies, it is important to have a frequency for data sampling. The frequency should however not be biased. The sampling process involves the registry on sample based on a systematic procedure. Data collection methods for the proposed research will include polls. Twitter consists of an extension that allows an online audience to fill in a poll based on a post (Demirbas et al., 2010). The polls are posted in form of normal tweets with an extension of allowed interaction of selection based on a listed number of options. The poll is an excellent method to determine how a user feels based on a certain issue (Demirbas et al., 2010). Polls are not only user friendly because they do not require the collection of personal data first, they only automatically tally polls based on percentage and figures. One disadvantage of the method is that it may be similar to a certain underlying structure leading to collection of biased information. Data analytical tools will be used in order to capture elements such as keyword searches and content ideation. This will help keep track of how a particular topic is being interacted with as well as the group interacting with the topic and key concepts mentioned during interaction with posts. The data collection approach chosen for the proposed research will generate statistics on a real time bass which means that the information gathered will always be up to date. According to Flores and Rezende (2018), With the use of the social media classification tools, the data collection approach will be able to filter through different rudiments such as location and user preference. The disadvantage of this type of data collection method is that analysis is difficult when it is based on unstructured data. These includes other forms of media such as images, videos and audio files.
Research Method Design
The chosen research methodology will be the qualitative methodology. This is based on the fact that the research requires underlining reasons as to the process of information gathering on social media through data analysis. This information can be acquired through qualitative methodology. Qualitative research is described as a type of exploratory study, which is used to get the underlying reasons as to particular research question and why a certain occurrence takes place through use of non-numerical data (Gelo et al., 2008). It is through this sort of research that one obtains ideologies that they can utilize in qualitative research. It is used to discover the underlying reasons for a particular occurrence. The research method identifies an in-depth analysis of how a research question was uncovered. Based on the research proposal, the methodology will help determine the opinion behind information seeking on twitter and its relevance to market research on a new product. It shows the options that were behind a particular idea. According to Ercikan and Roth (2006), the responses of this type of research as subjective hence it does not support generalization of results. The researcher prefers this approach since it helps in getting an in-depth understanding of a subject matter. It is also a simpler approach to use for researchers to use in getting answers to their research questions. Although qualitative methodology allows the analysis of different opinions, it has certain limitations. The methodology does not permit the generality of data because it is meant to express different opinions based on data gathered since the information is subject to the participants (Pace and Hemmings, 2007). Based on the research proposal, qualitative methodology will provide insight o the interaction on the social platform based on the product while giving ideologies behind its popularity or rejection in various settings (Pace and Hemmings, 2007). It will also help create a pattern of product use and assess which type of audience an organization should focus on when it comes to product promotion. This method may be limiting because a lot of information on social media is based on public opinion and may not reflect the true opinion of an individual hence subject to bias.
Ethical Considerations
One of the ethical considerations based on social media research is whether or not information is made for the public or is private (Elgesem, 2015). When it comes to terms and conditions that social media audience agreed upon, there is the question on whether or not their personal details may be used on third party organizations. It is difficult to determine whether or not this information may be utilized in a public domain. It is therefore difficult to draw the ethical line on whether or not consent given to use information for research for third party organizations allows the research to present the information publicly. Research indicates that it is challenging to justify the use of personal data on a public domain based on the fact that it can be accessed on social media (Stevens et al., 2015). When it comes to online posts, they are mainly determined as either public or private based on the settings on the user himself. Twitter for instance allows the interaction and access of all public posts including retweets and sharing. However, particular individuals may limit the viewing of their posts to a certain audience and disable sharing of their content with certain audiences. This is an instance of how the social media company has tried to deal with user privacy. It ensures that any posts that are set to private or limited to certain audiences have a discretion when it comes to their sharing capabilities (Lampinen et al., 2011). It is for this reason that direct messages can only be accessed by parties interacting in various accounts while tweets allow for wide sharing. In order to address ethical concerns on information sharing and analysis, the research will limit data analysis to posts that have been made public. The research analysis process will also limit the use of personal data such as usernames. Instead, it will filter through information based on the research topic and analyses based on account interaction without details of specific account names.
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