Signify was founded a year ago as a reaction to the direction we perceived #datascience to be heading. We're working hard to try and change the way business and politics think of and engage with data. There is a choice to be made...
"The person who wins by lying will govern by lying"
Brazilians are the second most active users of social media in the world, and there area already several organisations on both left and right who have made it their business to increase polarisation and spread fake news. There is some hope for candidates who are consistent and clear whenever they speak and who stand up for ordinary people - having a mission and sticking to that mission will make it harder for people to attack them, although it will not stop those attacks.
What is Dark Social?
What is dark social? Why does it matter? What is the impact of private networks on public opinion? Is there a way to track or measure dark social? Our friends at Hook Research produced this video - featuring our own Jonathan Sebire (Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer) - as part of their excellent Talking Human series.
'Dark Social' describes activity that takes place on social media behind privacy settings, and which cannot be measured by conventional social media analytics. Thanks to the proliferation of messaging apps and increased awareness of privacy settings on Facebook, dark social is now a larger and more active space than public social media channels like Twitter.
Signify are especially interested in dark social because it is the place where extreme ideas and thoughts go unchallenged, finding acceptance with large groups of like-minded individuals before entering the mainstream. It is impossible to understand the increasing influence of nationalist ideas and groups without tracing their work on dark social.
You can read more about Dark Social and subscribe to the excellent Talking Human series via the Hook Research blog
Case Study: VAGov 2017
TWITTER TALK: WHY HAS DATA SCIENCE GONE DARK?
Signify were recently invited to give a talk at Twitter HQ, London for an event organised by the National Centre for Social Research. The talk features Jonathan Sebire (Chief Strategy Officer) and Joe Harrod (Chief Operating Officer, that's me) talking about the subversion of data science in politics. Here's the video:
Sincere apologies for the shocking quality of both audio and video. This is ripped from Periscope and overlaid with the slides we were presenting. If you can look past these limitations, the talk encapsulates some of the reasons why we decided to set up Signify - and why we believe positive issues-led campaigns will always trounce negative tactics.
You can learn more about the great work done by the National Centre for Social Research at natcen.ac.uk. They are an awesome organisation and the other talks on the night were so inspiring. Probably the highlight was a study on using searches for medical conditions to predict overload on hospitals each winter - life saving insight.