Bob Tippee
Editor
Online communication offers a benefit that ranks below the more-obvious delights, such as connectivity and speed, but that is important nevertheless.
As anyone with a web site knows, online wizardry makes communications more measurable than ever before. It's now possible to count visits, page views, clicks, tweets, posts, and nearly everything else that happens on the internet. In fact, online communication generates so many numbers that making sense of them all requires special computer programs and technical training. It also gives analysts a chance to assess what's important to the public—or at least that part of it that's active in cyberspace.
Window on opinion
Chevron Corp. is using online traffic data as a window on public opinion about energy. The quarterly Chevron Pulse Report assesses what it calls "the energy conversation" on the basis of English-language, online "posts." A post, the report says, is "a piece of online content, such as a blog post, tweet, photo, video, or discussion comment."
Posts show up across a wide spectrum of media outlets, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. A lot of them do. According to the current version of Chevron's report, 5.7 million posts discussing energy appeared in the fourth quarter of 2010. In the 18 months that ended last Dec. 31, energy posts totaled 20.8 million.
As always, interpreting that much data is tricky. Working with Edelman, a public relations consultancy, Chevron has been collecting and analyzing online post data since 2008, employing what Robert Raines, the oil firm's interactive communications manager, describes as "rigorous methodology."
The analysis concentrates on eight topics in three categories. One category, energy resources, includes access, energy reserves, and energy security. Another category, energy and technology, includes energy efficiency, technology and innovation, and alternatives and renewables. And the energy-and-environment category covers environment, resources, and policy and climate change.
Beyond counting posts in these categories, further divided into 74 subcategories, the report analyzes sentiment on the basis of a dictionary of key words developed by Edelman. It displays the finely parsed results in digestible charts, which in the current edition occupy most of 63 pages. Even with the graphic help, the numbers can be baffling.
The report does, however, offer a narrative summary of possibly meaningful changes between reporting periods. During the 18 months ending last December, the summary says, only one of the three categories, energy and technology, received a positive net sentiment score. That category also generated the largest volume, with more than 12 million posts. The category with the lowest volume was energy resources, 2.2 million posts. Energy and environment scored lowest in assessed sentiment. Energy resources was close behind.
Among the eight topics, alternatives and renewables generated the largest volume, with 5.8 million posts. Climate change accounted for more than 20% of the 18-month online conversation but had the lowest sentiment score.
The energy-reserves topic had only slightly more than 6% of the discussion volume.
All three energy-and-technology topics had positive sentiment scores, energy efficiency highest among them. All three topics under energy resources were negative in sentiment; among them, access scored lowest.
Between the third and fourth quarters of last year, the volume of online, energy-related conversation increased by 30% to 5.7 million posts, with energy and technology accounting for 62% of the discussion. But sentiment in that category slipped from positive to neutral, drawing its lowest score in six quarters.
Among the three categories, energy resources had the lowest conversation volume and net sentiment score in the fourth quarter. The online discussion about energy and environment rose 47% in volume from the third quarter but scored a 3.1% decrease in conversation sentiment.
More numbers
Make of those numbers what you will. Many more are available at www.ChevronPulseReport.com.
Why is Chevron collecting and analyzing all this data?
The goal, Raines said at the Special Libraries Association annual meeting in June, is to "position Chevron as a thought-leader."
Numbers must be available on how it's doing. Probably somewhere online.
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