"[...] seven key informant interviews were conducted with humanitarian organizations that have been at the forefront of social listening projects throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we anchored the research in the COVID-19 response, our findings suggest that the uses and impacts of social lis
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tening are applicable across all elements of humanitarian response besides COVID-19 and even beyond health. The paper is structured around three components: (1) the differences between what organizations are hoping for (expected results) and what they have observed so far (observed results) in relation to the impacts of social listening, (2) the major barriers affecting the utilization of findings derived from social listening, (3) a preliminary brainstorm around recommendations that could mitigate the effects ofthe barriers identified and contribute to a realization of the expected results.
Interviewees expressed expectations for long-term and structural benefits from the ongoing use of social listening findings. The most common expected results include contributions to improved infodemic management that is receptive to community concerns, stronger community engagement, more responsive programming and policy design, and more collaboration between humanitarian and health actors. Our findings suggest that, although some of these structural promises have not yet been realized, significant foundations have been laid. Organizations have observed that social listening findings are already contributing to improvements in RCCE, internal adaptations of program design, growth and acceptance of social listening throughout organizations, and a growing influence on public health policy. Despite these important results, there are still major challenges preventing the realization of social listening as a transformational tool for humanitarian response.
Thirteen major barriers were identified, which exist at every stage of the traditional social listening project workflow. For data collection and analysis, the study found that the qualitative nature of the data, the predominance of a social media-only listening approach without an offline component, a reliance on traditional engagement statistics, limited qualified human resources, and issues around collaboration all hamper the effective use of social listening findings." (Conclusion)
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"Making Open Development Inclusive: Lessons from IDRC Research focuses on the connection between openness and inclusion in global development. It brings together the latest research that cuts across a wide variety of political, economic, and social arenas - from governance to education to entreprene
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urship and more. The chapters draw on empirical evidence from a wide and diverse range of applications of openness, uncovering the many critical and underlying elements that shape and structure how particular openness initiatives and/or activities play out - and critically - who gets to participate, and who benefits [or not] from openness, while exploring the frontiers where openness intersects with deeper challenges of development, technology, and innovation." (Publisher description)
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