Tutor Interview Series: Chris Phethean – Economy

chris

Briefly tell me what your session is going to be about –
My activity falls into Week 5 (Economy) and covers the topic of Social Business – primarily focusing on how businesses and organisations can carry out social media monitoring and analysis to improve their performance. This will go over the advantages of using social media, problems with determining whether it has much of an effect or not, and begins to indicate some areas where network analysis could be used to gain valuable insights into an online brand community.

What are the main aims you want to achieve? –
I’m aiming to get people thinking about what it is about social media that makes it so engaging, and how this is utilised by organisations to get people interacting with their brand. By understanding this, you will have a much greater sense of the effect that social media has had (and is having), and why it opens up completely new forms of communication, that in turn facilitate new opportunities for businesses.

How will the learners benefit? –
They will learn about some of the main issues preventing reliable social media measurement at this time, and begin to understand that the meaning of certain actions on social media are questionable – especially when an organisation is trying to gauge the audience response to something. What did it mean when you ‘liked’ something on Facebook that your favourite shop posted? But rather than just focusing on the negatives, we’ll look at some of the really innovative campaigns that have been carried out, where social media has definitely had a positive results, to appreciate the power that these new services posses.

What excites you most about delivering this session within the Web Science MOOC? –
The most exciting thine to me is that the very process of offering this session through a MOOC is like practicing Web Science in action. This is the Web changing the way people can approach, carry out and engage with education, and to be a Web Scientist involved in delivering part of this course is really invigorating. Delivering this session relating to social media is great because it ties in with my research interests and lets me share what I’ve been working on to a new audience – and hopefully will help to spark their interest and curiosity in to the topic!