What is Social Media Data

Social media data are spreading widely across the world with a number of public institutions now active on social media. Much attention is being paid to how public institutions can exploit social media, for example, to provide better public services or engage with the general public. Little is, however, known about the potential offered by the data generated through social media, in particular, the possibility of applying social media data formally within a performance measurement system (PMS). The aim of this chapter is to explore how social media data can be integrated into a PMS for a public institution, proposing in this respect a framework of analysis. This framework places the decision-maker at the centre of the cycle and it consists of three main phases: the collection of social media data, the computation of indicators, and the visualization of data.