[Air-L] Research with social media: looking for solutions

[Marco Bardus]

Dear AoIR-ists,



I am writing here to seek some inspiration and suggestions about using
social media tools for research purposes, in particular for data management
and assessment.



In my PhD studies I deal with health behaviour change interventions using
new media and social web sites. At the moment I am involved in an SMS and
e-mail worskite physical activity programme and I have to manage and look
after multiple and distinct databases in different formats and for different
purposes as follows: 1) web-based e-mail marketing application and 2)
SMS-provider application, for delivering content, 3) contact relationship
log file (database), 4) survey assessment tool, 5) regular communication
database with Outlook.



Needless to say that the situation gets complicated especially due to the
amount of time needed to manage all these components.

Therefore, I am now looking for simpler, easier to manage possibly
interoperable open source solutions that would help me effectively assist in
all the intervention phases: content development and delivery, recruitment
of participants, online behavior tracking, assessment and evaluation.



What applications (preferably open-source, integrateable and inter-operable)
would you recommend for doing the following activities?

-       Communication and content management

-       Contact relationship management

-       Online behavior tracking

-       Qualitative web content analysis (for tracking and analyzing
conversations)

-       Web-based assessment (survey tools)



Any suggestion would be most welcome!
Thank you,

Marco

-- 
Marco Bardus, MA
Research Assistant / PhD Student
Institute of Communication and Health
Faculty of Communication Sciences
Università della Svizzera italiana
via G. Buffi, 13
CH-6900 Lugano
(e) marco.bardus at usi.ch
(skype) markusthebardus
(w) http://www.ich.com.unisi.ch/
(w) http://www.marcobardus.com
(t) +41 58 666 42 94
(m) +41 76 269 09 70