Professor David Sanders, pro-vice-chancellor research at the University of Essex will also be involved in the investigation of the similarities, differences and interconnections of traditional digital market research and social media measurement.

The research programme will involve two separate methodologies: a weekly questionnaire sent to an SSI online panel to understand voter intent, key issues and how voters feel they are represented in the election ‘noise’ (the panel will deliver responses from 150 respondents per week); and an ongoing social media monitoring of more than 700 forums, feeds and blogs, following key buzzwords and sentiments around the main parties, their leaders and political policies.

The aim of the project is to compare and contrast information gathered through these two separate digital channels with a view to developing guidance and best practices for market researchers trying to blend the traditional with the newer worlds of MR to offer new insights.

It will look at comparing the relative importance of issues from a panel, to the share of social media buzz, to try and understand the share of public opinion on specific policies and the associated sentiment in terms of party allegiance.

To track social media sentiment the study will look at key words and sentiment analysis to investigate the share of buzz around each of the political parties and what that buzz really represents – whether that’s positive or negative. In addition, it will look at the different topics for the election, to see which of these, in combination with the political party, seems to be the most talked about.

To complement the social media side, SSI is interviewing, on a daily basis throughout the election campaign, representative samples of the UK population. The survey asks what political topics people are hearing discussed, how loud those discussions are, how divisive they may be, and how strongly held the opinions are.

Research-live.com will share the findings when the study is complete.