Quantitative data in social media analytical work

I met Pete Quily (Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Coach) through the Vancouver Bloggers Meetup and Third Tuesday groups, and I am very glad I did, for many reasons. For one, because I’ve always had a long standing interest in ADD and its treatment/management. For two, because I really like Pete and I enjoy his conversation and insights. And for three, because he always manages to share some really good links/sites. This time, the stuff Pete shared has already been profiled by some other colleagues in the social media world and received attention in the mainstream media: his analysis of the recent civic election and the use of social media strategies.

Graph credit: Pete Quily on Flickr.

One really interesting thing for me here is the use of quantitative data as a metric for comparison. While I am a chemical engineer by training, I have tended to undertake more qualitative work (particularly in-depth interviews, textual analysis of documents, discourse analysis, etc.) Nevertheless, when I did my PhD, my advisor and mentor (who is highly quantitative) completely shifted my approach and made me become much more quantitative.

I have used quantitative metrics to study wastewater policy (and I’m quite comfortable doing so) although for most of my studies I’ve complemented the number crunching with in-depth interviews and a very thorough literature review. And Pete’s post makes me again feel confident that using numbers can actually provide us with good insights into the behavior of each candidate on social media platforms.

I am guessing one follow up would be an in-depth interview with both candidates and their understanding of the goals of the social media campaign, coupled with interviews with their campaign managers and those consultants who handled the campaigns and the platforms. Hat tips to Pete for an excellent analysis. I guess it’s now up to me to do the qualitative follow up!