House of Commons - Responsible Use of Data - Science and Technology Committee

Responsible Use of Data - Science and Technology Committee Contents

2 The potential benefits of social media data

8. Our first consideration was to establish if social media data had the potential to provide benefits for the UK in terms of both economic growth and more effective governance.

Economic benefits

9. Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Web Science Trust, told us that the data science sector was "set to grow, by some accounts, by around 100% in three to four years' time".[16] His view of data, in an article he had written for The Times, as "the new raw material of the 21^st century" was echoed by the Minister, who noted that big data was being called the "oil of the 21^st Century".[17]

10. techUK identified social media data, as a particular subset of big data, as a huge area of growth with studies indicating "that, with over 1.5 billion social media users and 80% of online users interacting with social media regularly, there is a $1.3 trillion global opportunity to be unlocked through the social media revolution".[18] The Minister told us that the Government viewed social media data as an important part of big data as an overall resource.[19]

11. Carl Miller, of the think tank Demos, noted that, currently, "a few fields are completely redrawing their business models" on the basis of social media data becoming available for use and we heard examples of ways in which UK businesses could benefit from social media data.[20] The UK was already taking a "leading" role in "scientific information and research evaluation", an established sector that Timo Hannay, Digital Science, thought would be "revolutionised" by the use of "online data", including (but not limited to) social media data.[21] techUK told us that improvements could be made to products in light of knowledge about consumers gained from social media data:

The Government remarked that data could "enable market-changing products and services".[23] There may also be benefits for consumers themselves. The Consumer Data Research Centre at the University of Leeds noted that "better and more effective consumer outcomes could be obtained by optimising consumer choices in light of individual lifestyles".[24] It went on to add that "opinions—positive and negative—of [customer] experiences can guide service providers and contribute to UK brand positioning internationally".[25]

12. Witnesses were optimistic about the ability of the UK, to a greater extent than many other countries, to develop social media data into an economically important resource. Mr Miller said that the UK was considered a "leader" in Europe due to a "strong higher education sector and lively tech innovation hubs".[26] His thoughts were supported by the Minister, who stated that the UK stood in "good comparison with other European countries" while recognising that other countries such as the US, Japan and India held strengths.[27] Research Councils UK was also of the opinion that the UK was in "a position to become a world-leader in this area", although it added that current training and capacity building provisions were "insufficient to meet the growing demand".[28]

Administrative benefits

13. According to Mr Miller, social media data, when placed in the hands of civil servants, has the potential to provide a contribution to "evidence based policy making".[29] Other witnesses highlighted its ability to supplement information gathered about the UK population from other means, such as the census or surveys; Emma Carr, Big Brother Watch, told us that the Office for National Statistics was "looking at Twitter to see what it can ascertain from that that it could not necessarily ascertain from the census".[30] In other countries, social media has been able to provide key information that would be useful for governance purposes: for example, according to one witness, in Australia, Twitter users began to use the hashtag #mythbusters to identify whether flooding incidents were true or not.[31]

14. However, Dr Ella McPherson, University of Cambridge, was clear that social media could probably only ever be used in "addition to, not as a replacement for, other methods of inquiry".[32] Dr Mathieu d'Aquin, Open University, gave us an example of how Twitter could be used to establish that events were taking place, which could be validated by CCTV footage.[33] Professor Mick Yates, Consumer Data Research Centre, University of Leeds, explained that the data collected by the census provided "a broad look at everything, in a structured and detailed way"and could not be replaced by social media data as, unlike the census, people on social media platforms choose what to share, if they participate at all.[34] As we concluded about administrative data in an earlier report, The Census and Social Science, social media data could only serve a supporting role for more traditional data types rather than being the sole source of social information.[35]