Is the number of followers the best measure for the influence of a person in social media? How can emotions, which are triggered by language, increase a persons impact in online channels? The answers to this and other interesting questions were presented by Professor David Schweidel (Emory University, Atlanta) in his guest talk at WU.

He is one of the leading experts in customer relationship management and social media analytics. He analyzed three months of twitter data to show how people adapt their wording to evoke certain emotions. Especially young people use social media channels as their primary news gathering platform. Politicians and their campaigns have realized the importance of social media and tend towards stronger words just to increase their attention in the web. Another research project of David and his team focuses on the social media reactions to company failure and how the different types of users react in such cases.

We thank David for his insights into this interesting research topic. (Stefan Vamosi)