SOCIAL MEDIA DATA MINING: A STUDY OF PUBLIC AWARENESS

Abstract

Digital communications have become an essential part of life, whether it be staying in touch with loved ones via social media, purchasing groceries and other retail essentials or completing online qualifications and improving your skill set as a resource. Marketing in the digital realm has therefore become more significant than ever before and in turn so has data mining and the monetisation of transactional data insights. This research therefore presents a qualitative study with the intention of ascertaining the awareness levels of female social media users over the age of 35 to the understanding of data mining on social media platforms and its uses. Of which the results show that South African females specifically over the age 40 have a lack of understanding of who owns social media transactional data and how social media platforms generate revenue impacting their overall awareness levels of social media data mining as well as targeted social media marketing. These results have a thought-provoking impact on the ethics of social media marketing regarding the human rights to freedom of choice versus the benefits of businesses bottom line revenue and to what degree marketers need to be wary of their actions regarding crossing the ethical parameters through the pursuit of successful digital marketing campaigns.