Social media monitoring is accepted by a majority of the public when it is used to detect possible terrorist activity, but not when it is used to better target them with advertising, a study has found.
The Unisys Security Insights Australia social media study, conducted by Newspoll surveryed 1,210 people from Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand. Younger Australians were the most likely to be comfortable with their social media presence being monitored for advertising purposes.
When people were asked whether social media monitoring was acceptable for detecting terrorist activity a comfortable majority believe it is in each country. In Australia, 79% of people believe it is.
A solid majority also believe it is acceptable to use social media monitoring to identify areas of public concern and track public sentiment about how an organisation is performing, both of which are key elements of making cities smarter.
A majority of people also believed it was acceptable to use social media monitoring when evaluating a candidate’s suitability for a job.
However, when it came down to using social media monitoring to identify specific individuals for targeted advertising or offers just 27% of Australians believed this was acceptable and only 30% of New Zealanders. 60% of Malaysians polled still believed this was an acceptable use of social monitoring.
The study concludes: “But this survey clearly demonstrates that just because the tools and means exist to do data mining of social media data, that doesn’t automatically make it acceptable in the eyes of the Australian public.”
“This research shows that monitoring of social media, even social media in the public domain, raises invasion of privacy concerns in the minds of consumers.”
The research no doubt confirms what brands already knew, that they must be careful when monitoring their customers for advertising purposes, and mustn’t intrude into newsfeeds where they’re not welcome.
You can get the study yourself here.