The Social Intelligence Stories that Caught Our Attention: Volume Twenty-Nine

The stories we’ve been reading this week include, Clemson tracking impeachment inquiry, a new grant to use social data to devise better ways to give health advice, Trufan acquires SocialRank, who owns our personal data, and people falling for fake news.

Clemson’s Social Media Listening Centre Tracks Impeachment Inquiry Hearing

The social media listening centre run by Clemson University has been monitoring and analysing the data on social media surrounding the discussions of the public impeachment inquiry hearings.  If you’re a little nosey, like me, you’ll want to watch the video below.

$1.5 Million Grant for Diet Advice in Health System to Use Social Media Data

Dr Lauren Bell and her team of researchers at Griffith University have received a five year grant to improve the quality of dietary advice given by general practitioners and other front-line professionals.  Part of the $1.5million will be used to work with social listening researchers to understand what the general public is talking about online, to guide the design of a patient intervention. It’s nice to see social data being put to good work in such a large project!

Read the full article here.

Social Intelligence Platform Trufan Acquires SocialRank

This week it was announced that Toronto-based software platform helping brand activate fan communities, Trufan has acquired New York-based SocialRank, a social media analytics platform that sorts various audience segments based on Instagram and Twitter.

The purchase price was not disclosed and SocialRank will continue to operate as a standalone product. Trufan said that the acquisition will advance its position as a social intelligence platform.

Read the full article here.

Who Own Our Personal Data and What are We or “They” Entitled to do With it?

The debate over personal data continues, across on Medium, Tulika Agrawal discusses who owns the data and what they and we are entitled to do with it. Did you know that there are nearly as many pieces of digital information as there are stars in the universe?

Read the full article here.

Facebook Users Believe More than Half of Fake News is True

Have you ever been caught out by fake news? Looking at new stories online is a bit like trying to catch the “joke stories” on the 1^st of April. A recent study found that 44% of the time study participants could only correctly assess whether headlines on social media were true or false. The study indicates that people are more likely to believe headlines that aligned with their political beliefs. Understanding behavior, this makes sense and could be even more dangerous in the fact that they may not click to read the full article and believe the main, usually controversial headline.

Read the full article here.

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