FoodRisC: The role of social media during a food crisis

In this podcast, Adrian Moss, Managing Director of Focus Business Communications, discusses FoodRisC research dealing with the role of social media during a food crisis. His team was responsible for the evaluation and selection of suitable monitoring software and the tracking of food crisis in real time during 2011 as well as a previous incident from 2008.

Adrian discusses the work that was done to evaluate social media use by the public, analysing the content to help understand network dynamics, and their use of links to sources. He also comments on the practical issues of dealing with large datasets, the varied roles of different social media platforms such as Twitter and blogs and the value of participating in social media conversations during and after a crisis. He also talks about the ‘echo chamber effect’ of social media comments and how Google uses social media to help ranking of searches.

About Adrian Moss

Adrian Moss holds a B.Sc. degree in Psychology and is Managing Director of Focus Business Communications (FBC), a digital media communications agency specialising in audio and video production and the use of social media for audience engagement. Focus’ clients come from both the public and private sectors. Adrian has been involved in international marketing communications for over 30 years.

He was a founder member of three business start-ups in the IT industry during the 1980s and 1990s and moved into agency services and client consultancy in 1999. He helped establish FBC in 2004 to provide services to clients on Web 2.0 and Social Media. Since then he and his team have worked with many clients to help them understand and deploy Web 2.0 and social media programs. Adrian is a regular speaker and presenter at conferences and events in Europe. Adrian and his team have also trained over 500 people on social media via public and in-house courses.