Provided by Professor Kjerstin Thorson and TA Melanie Medeiros at Michigan State University

1. Using Meltwater to Identify Competitor Data Assignment
Provided by: Professor Kjerstin Thorson
Michigan State University
Identify a competitor (or another organization working in a similar space) for your client. Use
Meltwater to look at social conversations about your client compared to conversations about the
competitor. Write up a one-paragraph report detailing what you searched for and what you
found and what you think it means (how is your client doing compared to the competition?). Try
to use both qualitative (what did you hear people saying?) and quantitative (how much? how
many?) data in your response. This is an individual exercise, but work with your group members
to make sure you all choose a different search query in Meltwater.
For the large undergrad class, the exercise was set up as a quiz, so all students were asked to
create the same search and answer a series of questions:
On Meltwater, create a news search for self-driving cars using the keywords "self-driving cars,"
"self-driving car," "self driving," and "autonomous vehicle." These search terms should all be in
the "AT LEAST ONE of these keywords" section. Save the search as your initials. (After you're
done with the exercise, please delete your search and dashboard.) On the dashboard page,
create a new "Analyze" dashboard using your saved search. (It should have a brain icon next to
it.) Title it with your group number and initials, like your search. Set the custom date range to be
from Sept. 3-Oct. 3, 2017. You'll use this dashboard to answer the questions.
Hint: you may have to edit the settings, add widgets, or change the date range to answer the
questions.
Q1: Media exposure about self-driving cars spiked one day between Sept. 3 and Oct. 3. What
day saw the most media exposure?
Q2: Between Sept. 3 and Oct. 3, what percentage of stories about self-driving cars were
negative (based on Meltwater's original sentiment analysis)?
Q3: What theme was the most trending between Sept. 3 - Oct. 3?
Q4: Waymo (a self-driving car company) wants to understand what their share of voice is within
news stories about self-driving cars. They're using the search queries from above and looking at
the same dashboard you are, but they keep seeing share of voice as 100%. What's wrong?