FactspaceWA, Nigeria 18.04.2024 – FactSpace West Africa has extended training on the use of Brandwatch, a social media analytics tool to Nigerian journalists in Kano State in northern Nigeria. The tool is aimed at enhancing their social listening skills by monitoring online conversations.
The training held between April 16 and 17, 2024 at the Chilla Luxury Suite was organised in collaboration with the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC) and brought together 15 journalists (3 females and 12 males) from various media houses.
The training was part of an ongoing project sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) DAI to demonstrate the advantages and or challenges of using social media analytics to detect and mitigate digital threats to democracy.
The project aims to assist local organisations in integrating social media analytics into their toolkit to improve their understanding of social media trends and patterns, which can help them make informed decisions.
FactSpace WA is championing the deployment of the training and usage of Brandwatch in the West African Region specifically in Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.
Rabiu Alhassan, Director of FactSpace West Africa, in his introduction, noted: “Brandwatch enables journalists and researchers to gather comprehensive information on various subjects across different social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter)”. He however mentioned that X’s API access for Brandwatch’s functionality was more open than Facebook’s.
The training aimed at enhancing participants’ social listening skills and equipping them to conduct evidence-based research on public issues, starting from online trends and extending to offline impacts.
Rabiu expressed the readiness of FactSpace to collaborate with the journalists on in-depth public interest research to raise awareness about attempts to manipulate online trends and influence conversations.
Yossabel Chetty of CABC took participants through how to conduct desktop research and common mis-or disinformation techniques.
She noted: “Understanding the subject matter will allow you to position any topic within commonly used mis-or disinformation tactics”.
Yossabel took the participants through the research methodology, culminating in a discussion on induction and deduction forms of the research approach.
Jesse Cann, also of CABC, took the participants through the practicality of using the Brandwatch from building queries to navigating dashboards.
By Julius Kofi Satsi
