Public Insight Lab

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Public Insight Lab catalyzes interdisciplinary social media research through:

• Access: to state-of-the-art social and digital media analytics software
• Expertise: of faculty and affiliates
• Experiences: for students and faculty to engage in social media research

Based in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, with support from the Social and Behavioral Research Consortium and in collaboration with the NU Public Policy center, we conduct social media research with collaborators across campuses and the community to power insights that inform action, fueled by cutting edge software and the skills of our faculty, students and affiliates.

The Public Insight Lab recently held a free Zoom workshop, Tools and Training for Social Media Research in Academia, with support from The University of Nebraska Lincoln's Social & Behavioral Sciences Research Consortium and the Methodology and Evaluation Research Core Facility. The agenda and speaker list is available here. The workshop attracted over 240 registrants from across the globe, spanning 50+ disciplines and 25+ universities and colleges. The videos from the workshop are available here to highlight and illustrate valuable approaches to and tools for social media research in academia.

Session One: Why social media matters

Five-minute Flashtalks from scholars at UNL, University of Alabama, Clemson, and Louisiana State University

The following videos are recordings from Session One:

• Intro to the Workshop
• Flashtalk video 2.1
• Flashtalk video 2.2
• Flashtalk video 2.3
• Flashtalk video 2.4

Session Two: Exploring and harvesting social media data with Sprinklr

Dr. Valerie Jones, Associate Professor, College of Journalism and Mass Communications, UNL

Pranay Joshi, Success Manager, Sprinklr  

Session Three: From “big data” to “the right data”: Utilizing Sprinklr’s topic search functionality to harvest filtered social data

Dr. Brandon Boatwright, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communication; Director of the Social Media Listening Center; Clemson University

Session Four: Designing and analyzing social media research

Dr. Jameson Hayes, Associate Professor of Advertising; Director of the Public Opinion Lab; University of Alabama