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The PM’s brand shines on, as an ET Magazine-MavenMagnet study of online conversations over the past year indicates, although it’s respected more than it’s trusted — and the expectations are only piling up.

Check out the complete study report here.

MavenMagnet study in association with The Economic Times. 

They were born in India, and achieved fame, glory and success in other parts of the world. Which is why we decided to call them the Global Indian Women (GIW) — their influence measured by big data research firm MavenMagnet, which began with a long list of 60 women, all born in India and making waves outside it.

These women earned their spurs across countries — from the United Arab Emirates to, inevitably, the US — but one thing’s for sure: you can’t take India and their Indianness out of them. After all, many of them are what and where they are because of their cultural roots, and their ability to adapt them to a new milieu.

Consider, for instance, the story of Falu Shah, who has introduced the West to a mint-new genre of ‘Hindi-Indie’ music. Part of the credit for the success of Falu — or Falguni as she was known in her childhood days in Mumbai – would have to go to her mother Kishori Reshamdalal who ensured that her daughter was trained in Hindustani classical music.

Then, the success saga of Zulekha Daud, founder of an eponymous UAE-based hospital chain, is incomplete without a significant mention of the struggles of her mother Bilkis Vali in getting Zulekha trained as a doctor in Nagpur, fighting orthodoxy on the one hand and her own lack of formal education on the other. In fact, Zulekha recalls how her mother successfully sat for her own class 10 exams while Zulekha studied medicine.

The MavenMagnet long list also had names like Leena Nair, till recently head of human resources at Hindustan Unilever before being called up to the Unilever Headquarters in London. The likes of Nair have been left out purely because much of their achievements were back home — at least so far. The study focused primarily on two areas: business; and the arts. That helped to short list 20 names for an in-depth research to bring out the granular details of their sphere of influence.

How we did it

MavenMagnet, a research company, uses big data to uncover consumer and market insights across a broad cross-section of demographic and psychographic segments. The key advantage of its research methodology is that it does not involve moderation of discussions or questions. Instead it uses the conversations that the consumers are having on various online platforms with their friends and family to gather insights. Maven-Magnet analysed 4,172 conversations among 1,642 individuals around the 20 women to evaluate their footprint in their domain of expertise and beyond.

A key functionality of the approach in this study is its impact normalisation technique. This was essential because of two reasons. Firstly, the social sphere of influence for individuals working in different fields is considerably different. For instance, authors writing in a particular genre have a great influence on their readership, but generally their sphere of influence is considerably smaller as compared to actors working on projects with mass appeal. In order to cover women in different fields, Maven Magnet normalised the influence analysis based on the field of focus. Secondly, some business leaders (Indra Nooyi and Padmasree Warrior) and show-business personalities (Mira Nair and Freida Pinto) are outliers who have a considerably high overall impact due to their stature and work. This approach ensured that these outliers didn’t set the benchmarks.

MavenMagnet’s Conversational Research doesn’t involve any discussion guides or questionnaires that can steer the outcome in a certain direction. This considerably increases the scope of discovery. One surprising insight in this study was that the imagery spectrum (sphere of influence) of artists is narrower as compared to business leaders. While the perception of artists was generally driven by factors such as domain expertise and sensory appeal that were directly linked to their profession, peripheral attributes such as social appeal and trust were relatively more dominant in case of business leaders.

This is a study done by MavenMagnet and was originally published as the cover story in the Economic Times on December 14, 2014.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi versus superstar Rajnikanth — how is that for a match-up? Perish the delicious thought, for now we just have netizens comparing the two.

It was inevitable though, with the aura of invincibility around the two and the Modi government completing 200 days in office on the eve of the release of the Rajni starrer, Lingaa.

To mark 200 days of the Modi Sarkar, ET Magazine got big data research firm MavenMagnet to crawl the internet to gauge the mood on the day.

MavenMagnet’s patented methodology for the survey gleans opinions out of public conversations without asking questions. Rajanikanth has company though; Modi is also being compared to Singham.

Never mind the scenes in Parliament, Modi still seems to be enjoying a honeymoon with the virtual world, with a net 22% positive vibe around him.

A large segment, or 61%, remains neutral or mildly positive. On the 200th day, that is Thursday, December 11, Modi also scored brownie points by congratulating President Pranab Mukherjee and tweeting in Russian to welcome president Putin.
Foreign relations, infusion of national pride, governance and his Kashmir pitch dominated the online discussions around him and his role as prime minister.

The discussions that focused on him personally hovered around his vision and his ability to engage with the masses.

The negative vibes were generated by the usual suspects. Positives and negatives split the vibes baskets down the middle in topics like ‘communal harmony’ and ‘secularism’.However, these topics themselves have not gathered enough traction yet to dominate the discussion around Modi and the most prominent words around him are “vision” and “shares” or “meets” followed by “developed”. Even words like “RSS” or “Hindu” are not prominent.

The man-in-charge imagery clearly is winning the day as this comment from an anonymous commentator shows: “Powerful Modi can only solve all India problems and put the opposition and even his own ministers in place.” Over to the next 200 days.

Research Undertaken in Support of Strategy Summit for Fighting Ebola

A high level of concern and an equally high level of ignorance about medical facts, real or perceived, continue to fuel conversations about Ebola in social media and the press, even as the disease drops out of the headlines.

In support of Strategies for Fighting Ebola: A Columbia University Summit to Help End the Epidemic, held this week at the Columbia Club in New York City, MavenMagnet, a multinational big data-based research company, conducted a study to understand the current U.S. public perceptions of Ebola.

The Summit is sponsored by: Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University School of Nursing, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York, The Columbia Alumni Association, and The Columbia University Club of New York.

The nationally balanced, projectable sample of 2,090, was drawn from an analysis of conversations about Ebola from a wide range of digital sources including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, community chat rooms, press, and other platforms between October 20, 2014 and November 20, 2014.

“With the vast majority of the conversations (41%) centered on discussions of the Medical Understanding behind the virus (i.e. the causes, prevention, effects, treatments, etc.), only 4% of the conversations were positive indicating a continuing high level of concern about the disease and a continuing lack of knowledge about medical facts,” said MavenMagnet CEO Aditya Ghuwalewala.

The key words which had the greatest impact in the conversations were: scared, plot and airborne. The reference to Ebola being part of a plot was, of course, highly charged, as was the reference to airborne which remains both a very hot and misunderstood topic.

Skepticism and Fear were the second most discussed topics and the focus of 18% of the conversations with Controversy a close third at 14%. Disturbingly, Racial Stigma also was part of 11% of the conversations.

On the positive side, 14% of the conversations referenced the importance of Global Solidarity in fighting Ebola. Awareness of celebrity initiatives such as those by Bob Geldof and BandAid, drove the solidarity references, with mentions in 58% of the conversations on Global Solidarity. Clearly, celebrity events are noticed and have the potential to have an even greater positive effect.

Surprisingly, both references to President Obama and hospitals were few and had very low impact.