Is data enough to evaluate influence? The birth and evolution of a measurement industry

• In Event: Markets as data - III - Standards and Market Infrastructures

Abstract

Public Relations (PR) practitioners have traditionally been reluctant to use quantitative evaluation. Their professional values are rooted in an instinctive deeper knowledge of the audiences and their expertise relies on personal influence. However, while most of the practitioners distrusted communication measuring instruments and rejected advertising metrics like exposure, a professional mobilisation discreetly started to germinate. To what extent social media data allowed for this happen?
A segment (Bucher and Strauss, 1961) explored the possibilities offered by technologies as early as 1990. These pioneers developed computer programs to automatise media content analysis. The display of rudimentary media listening devices allowed for a new industry to dawn. In 1996 the UK trade Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) was born. But it was not until 2010 when, pulled by the explosion of social media metrics, that the association and the industry got international notoriety. By this time, they had renewed their purpose. While relying on technology and integrating the values of the profession, they gave themselves the mission to question technological innovation of data markets to “measure and evaluate communication with metrics that make sense”.

Audience data has been used as currency (Kosterich and Napoli, 2016; Méadel, 2010; Napoli, 2010) but there are yet other uses to explore. Aided by a corpus of semi structured interviews, press and trade documents, this research study the industry dynamics and discourses in an effort to provide an account of a parallel measurement data industry, their conventions and struggles in order to exist.

Author

• Ms M. Valeria Ramirez, Universite Gustave Eiffel - LISIS - CONACYT