What 15 years of emotional intelligence told us about youth media audiences

Stephanie Winkler

  • Head of insights, VICE Asia-Pacific
Stephanie Winkler is an Australian cultural researcher, and Head of Insights for VICE Media in APAC. She is a data-nerd with a passion for helping brands, creatives and publishers make an authentic connection with young audiences. Her work has been featured at Pause Fest, REMIX, Mumbrella, YMA and AdWeek APAC.

Taking people on an emotional journey through content is the most critical part of being a publisher. Which is why emotion lies at the heart of VICE Media.

Our youth media brand launched in Australia in 2003, nine years after debuting in Canada. Since then, the publication has earned a reputation for gutsy, fearless and provocative journalism, earning a distinctive voice in news across everything from politics and technology, to fashion, food and the arts.

It is vital for our journalists to be able to make an authentic connection with their audiences, especially in the crowded digital age. To enhance our understanding of what moves youth audience across Australia, VICE partnered with IBM and Brisbane-based consultancy, Max Kelsen, to analyse articles and reader comments on social media, and explore themes and subsequent audience emotions generated by our content.  

Using technology to analyse emotions

The project used artificial intelligence (AI) to explore 15 years’ worth of articles and social media conversations to draw out key trends and connections between the authors and readers. To do this, VICE worked with Kelsen, a consultancy specialising in AI and machine learning technology, to analyse over 166,000 articles by VICE writers, over 34,000 Facebook posts from the US and A/NZ, and almost 300,000 comments posted on VICE’s social media channels. 

Combining IBM Watson’s natural language capabilities with Max Kelsen’s AI platform otso.ai, teams were able to enrich VICE's content with measures for concepts, topics, sentiment and emotion. The process was used as a testing ground for the otso.ai product.   

Watson identified the emotion present in every article, post or comment, and uncovered common themes and associations across complex, unstructured data. The process took a few hours.

This allowed us to see how both writers and the audience felt about different topics, with emotions segmented into joy, fear, anger, sadness and disgust. For example, ‘joy’ was the most prevalent emotion over time throughout the study, mainly attributed to articles around music, art, fashion and entertainment.

Another interesting finding was sentiment and tone of a VICE writer often impacts the reader’s emotions. This revealed a strong correlation between the sentiment of the writer and how it subsequently transferred to the reader. This finding highlights the emotional impact our articles can have on readers, while demonstrating the value of certain topics such as culture, music and art in starting conversations on social media.

By understanding emotions in relation to themes, and how they might have changed over time, we’ve been able to pinpoint what topics build positive brand experiences for readers.

In Australia specifically, we found an Increase in mentions of science and related topics in recent years. Youth have shown increasing optimism towards topics relating to science, technology and innovation.

There was also a marked increase in the number of discussions around politics, mental health and drugs in the recent years locally, compared to 15 years earlier when VICE first started publishing. Increasing discussions around topics related to mental health, depression, anxiety and sadness were observed, and many of these topics seemed to appear in conjunction with themes like politics, which is a prominent part of the pop-cultural fabric today. 

To continue growing and connecting with such a rapidly changing audience, it’s important for us to be equipped with meaningful data to best understand them. These findings will not only help shape content Australian youth care about, but also provide important insights for brands on VICE platforms.

Tags: IBM Watson, consumer engagement, artificial intelligence

Show Comments

Latest Whitepapers

More whitepapers

Latest Videos

More Videos

More Brand Posts

What are Chris Riddell's qualifications to talk about technology? What are the awards that Chris Riddell has won? I cannot seem to find ...

Tareq

Digital disruption isn’t disruption anymore: Why it’s time to refocus your business

Read more

Enterprisetalk

Mark

CMO's top 10 martech stories for the week - 9 June

Read more

Great e-commerce article!

Vadim Frost

CMO’s State of CX Leadership 2022 report finds the CX striving to align to business outcomes

Read more

Are you searching something related to Lottery and Lottery App then Agnito Technologies can be a help for you Agnito comes out as a true ...

jackson13

The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration

Read more

Thorough testing and quality assurance are required for a bug-free Lottery Platform. I'm looking forward to dependability.

Ella Hall

The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration

Read more

Blog Posts

Marketing prowess versus the enigma of the metaverse

Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.

Liz Miller

VP, Constellation Research

Why Excellent Leadership Begins with Vertical Growth

Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?

Michael Bunting

Author, leadership expert

More than money talks in sports sponsorship

As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.

Simone Waugh

Managing Director, Publicis Queensland

Sign in