Tracking Transitions - Evaluating the potential of social media data for measuring sustainability transitions
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School of Business |
Bachelor's thesis
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Authors
Date
2021
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Mcode
Degree programme
Johtaminen
Language
en
Pages
32 + 6
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Abstract
Societies around the world are facing life changing and even existential threats in sustainability. Discourse around topics like climate change, biodiversity loss and social injustice play an increasingly visible role in public discussion and have notable effects and implications on politics, regulation, business and consumer behavior. To tackle most sustainability challenges, widespread socio-technical transitions, involving numerous actors from public actors to households, start-up entrepreneurs and incumbent businesses, are needed. Socio-technical transitions that support sustainable development are called sustainability transitions. This thesis discusses sustainability transitions using the analytical framework multi-level perspective originally proposed by Rip & Kemp, 1998 and later iterated by F.W. Geels (for example 2002, 2008 and 2011). Measuring and understanding the current state of transitions is integral in guiding sustainable development and effective innovation in businesses and for all societal actors. Most notable implications are for startup entrepreneurs and other product and service developers, to support relevant innovation. This thesis examines the topic of socio-technical sustainability transitions by exploring current social media data use in urban sustainability research and its positioning as a part of broader socio-technical transitions. The underlying research question addressed in this thesis is how is social media data used to measure and understand sustainability transitions? Relevant literature discussing social media data usage in sustainable development is identified in its entirety from an established review paper by Ilieva and Mcphearson (2018) that discusses social media data use in urban sustainability research. 41 sources from Ilieva and Mcphearson (2018) are selected as material for analysis and categorized by ‘used data sources’ ‘used methods, key datapoints and the volume of data-set’, ‘aim of SMD analysis’ and ‘urban sustainability domains’. After the analysis, four key-roles for social media data in measuring and understanding sustainability transitions are proposed as follows: (1.) Making underlying landscape and regime values visible (2.) Identifying regime challenges and potential instability, (3.) Evaluating suitability and desirability of solutions and (4.) Assessing windows of opportunity. The positioning of the proposed four roles are discussed in respect to the multi-level perspective framework and presented in respect to a visualization (figure 2.) adapted from Geels, 2020. Finally, limitations of this thesis, reflections on the relevance and future directions of the topic are discussed along with potential managerial implications.Description
Thesis advisor
Yli-Kauhaluoma, SariKeywords
sustainability, sustainability transitions, social media data, multi-level perspective