Shaping the Future Through Cybernetic Approaches of Social Media Monitoring

Scientific research and development programs (R&D programs) are national instruments to sustainably secure innovative capability and competitiveness. Due to an increasing rate of change in all societal functional areas, these programs have to be continuously advanced, but also new R&D programs have to be tendered. Prospectively more societal impulses have to be taken into account for the advancement of R&D programs and the ex-ante determination of program contents. Here, the methodical basis is characterized by the analysis of social needs. In terms of substance, sources of Social Media (SM) work out perfectly as data or text corpora: Everyday life is becoming increasingly digitally networked and a large part of interpersonal communication is realized via SM. SM represent a pool of qualitative and quantitative data in order to reflect societal moods. It can be regarded as untouched, raw and unevaluated data. Existing methods of Social Media Monitoring (SMMO) use this information as a basis for trend analysis, issue monitoring and the detection of influencers. SMMO is no temporal specific action, but rather an open-ended task. The conventional application fields of SMMO primarily relate to commercial market research, corporate communications and public relations. In this context SMMO is used with the intent of an overall social and political use, interest or benefit. A new approach is currently being developed by considering methods of system theory and cybernetics. Using this theoretical, system-oriented framework, R&D programs can be constructed as socio-technical, complex living systems. Finally, cybernetic SMMO allows for a continuous and active involvement of the society into politics. It supports program management and research promoters of publicly funded R&D projects by taking into account social impulses for the advancement of R&D programs and the ex-ante determination of program contents. Cybernetic SMMO enables an active shaping of the future according to societal developments, trends and needs.