New Dimension of Politics - Political Radar (Radar Polityczny)

Political Behaviour of Internet Users within the Scope of Research by BrandON Media and CSWU

Web 2.0 has created ample opportunities for citizens to participate in politics. The average citizen no longer just passively receives content sent to him by the media and politicians, but willingly enters with them and other receivers into a virtual dialogue. Social media has become an integral part of the communication repertoire of politics, and the tools created for its continuous monitoring open up new research perspectives. Establishing the cooperation between BrandON Media and Department of Political Sociology in the Institute of Political Science of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw (CSWU) is to conduct a series of research on the basis of which there will be developed the Political Radar for monitoring and analysis of all actions performed by politicians and their reception in Social Media.

Nowadays, it is difficult to imagine a political party or candidate in the election who would not use social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter during the election campaign. Thanks to advances in technology, the access to these web pages is increasingly widespread. For the average citizens, they represent additional sources of information presented by politicians and other users. They also offer a space to express their own beliefs and opportunity to enter into a genuine, democratic dialogue, where every voice is "perceptible" and matters equally. Since the beginning of social networking sites, a growing involvement and increasing role played in political events by Internet users may be observed. It can be assumed that over time, these phenomena will only intensify.

The cooperation between BrandON Media and the Department of Political Sociology in the Institute of Political Science of the CSWU in Warsaw began in April 2015. BrandON Media as a company specialising in monitoring digital media provides necessary technological solutions for data acquisition and their development. It also provides support for their analysis and interpretation. The Department of Political Sociology analyses data and their interpretation in light of current social theories and using the latest methodologies.

"We are convinced that the cooperation with the academic community is the only right direction, where it will be possible to examine the Social Media and its impact of on election results. Already preliminary analyses carried out in cooperation with Katarzyna Grzybowską-Walecka, PhD and Paweł Matuszewski, PhD have showed the potential of the research," says Marcin Gromke, CEO of BrandON Media.

"The aim of our research is to discover regularities behind the huge collection of empirical data from social media. We believe that the close combination of the theoretical reflection with modern methods of analysing quantitative and qualitative data will lead to the creation of a tool that will fairly accurately represent social attitudes," says Paweł Matuszewski, PhD, Head of the Department of Political Sociology in the IPS of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University. "Already on the basis of the preliminary research, we can conclude that what so far have been thought to be the future of election campaigns, is now their present. Social media is an indispensable tool for effective communication of politicians with voters, without which the contemporary political campaigns can no longer exist," added Katarzyna Grzybowska-Walecka, PhD.

The project itself is also in line with the realities of the modern digital world, and therefore the results of all analyses will be published with open access, i.a. on the project website, www.radar-polityczny.pl.



About BrandON Media

BrandON Media is a company focused on providing services to monitor digital media (including social networking), solutions for data mining and analysis for medium and large companies. Their services are based on proprietary software platform to collect and analyse social data. They create a wide range of products for general use, as well as a number for very specific applications, e.g. for customers from the automotive industry. BrandON Media has been working on their Media Monitoring Solutions since 2010, when the first branch office in Gdansk was founded. Since 2012, BrandON Media has also been present on the German market with its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main.

About CSWU

Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw is a public university, whose origins date back to 1954. Currently, it educates over 16 000 students and graduates in 35 subjects. Currently, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University is in the top three most popular universities chosen by the candidates. The university constantly expands its educational offerings and, at the same time, focuses on the development of innovative teaching methods using the latest technology. The Institute of Political Science conducts i.a. graduate studies with the specialisation of Political Marketing and Political Sociology. Also, the original proprietary study program offers students workshops on political marketing, communication and data analysis. Our goal is to provide graduates with the skills needed to operate in a competitive labour market.



Polish version