Meltwater Media Monitoring in the Classroom

“One of the things that’s so great about this project is that, unlike a textbook or a course packet, where the burden is on the student to access it, we’ve been able to open [access to Meltwater] to virtually any student in the College of Communication.”-- Amy Shanler, Professor of the Practice, College of Communication

 

In today’s media landscape, communication professionals are required to not only generate engaging content but also track, analyze, and understand the impact that content has across a variety of media communication platforms. To prepare BU students to be knowledgeable and marketable within this landscape, the College of Communication initiated a pilot semester launching Meltwater for student and faculty use. Meltwater is a real-time platform for social media and news monitoring, conversation/trend analysis, audience demographic examination, and media insight reporting used across a diverse range of communications professions.

This experiential learning opportunity provides students the opportunity to move from the theoretical to the practical, with much more credible data to work with. With Meltwater, students are able to learn about and apply industry-standard software to help them better apply concepts learned in public relations, advertising, and media science courses. 

To launch their pilot semester, Amy Shanler, Professor of the Practice in the Mass Communication, Advertising, and Public Relations department, received Accelerating Classroom Transformation (ACT) grant funding from the Shipley Center. Shanler’s goals for this project included: 

• securing professors to adopt the technology for applied classroom assignments, 
• getting industry-standard technology in the hands of faculty and students, 
• teaching the importance of research to students with access to real-world data, and 
• demonstrating student improvement on assignment outcomes when compared to previous experiences without Meltwater. 

“In PR,  it matters more what you do than what you say,” says Shanler. “For our program to say we provide hands-on learning, we have to back that up by actually giving access to real-world tools to be in line with the ethics and practice of the profession.”

As an immediate outcome of the project, students in the courses piloting the software gained hands-on experience with an industry-standard software. They also gained deeper knowledge of how to understand audiences, trends, and conversations to improve deliverables like public relations plans and activities, and measure outputs and outcomes. 

“I think Meltwater is an excellent tool for conducting research,” according to one student enrolled in Dr. Michelle Amazeen’s Advertising Strategy & Consumer Insights course. “It was interesting that searching for a company's name could measure how an individual sees a company. Meltwater’s filtering options, including source types, languages, locations, keywords, and sentiments, made it easy to find the specific information I needed.” 

Additional unanticipated benefits included increased faculty interest in the platform for conducting research and students completing additional certifications through Meltwater in addition to their coursework to increase their marketability. So far, over 100 students have used this technology in their coursework, including undergraduate and graduate students, and professors in public relations, advertising, and media science.

For her future vision for this project, Shanler hopes “more students become increasingly comfortable with this technological environment and more students use it in a variety of classes.” Shanler is working with Meltwater to provide faculty platform demonstrations and walk-throughts so faculty become more comfortable using the program. As they move into year 2 of their pilot, Shanler and other professors are currently assessing and comparing Meltwater against other similar platforms such as Brandwatch and Talkwalker. Ultimately, Shanler wants to help professors “teach students how to be successful in the profession from day one” through incorporating industry-standard technologies across the curriculum.

Project Lead

Amy Shanler

Professor of the Practice and Associate Chair of the Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations Department shanlera@bu.edu

Amy Shanler has 25 years of experience managing communications activities for multiple organizations and industries, including retail, technology, business, health care, and entertainment. Amy co-directs the award-winning PRLab, the nation’s longest-running, student-led public relations agency, named “Best Training/Education Program” by PR News’s Agency Elite awards.…Read More

Close

Amy Shanler

Professor of the Practice and Associate Chair of the Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations Department shanlera@bu.edu

Amy Shanler has 25 years of experience managing communications activities for multiple organizations and industries, including retail, technology, business, health care, and entertainment. Amy co-directs the award-winning PRLab, the nation’s longest-running, student-led public relations agency, named “Best Training/Education Program” by PR News’s Agency Elite awards. In addition, Amy teaches courses on principles of public relations, crisis communications, and media relations. Previously, Amy was director of public and media relations for Royal Philips in North America, director of public and community relations for the office products giant Staples, and a senior account manager for a high-technology public relations subsidiary of FleishmanHillard. In 2023, Amy was named a Top Educator in public relations by PR News, and her work has won awards from the Public Relations Society of America, PR Club of New England, and SABRE. Amy holds a master's degree in public relations, a bachelor's degree in communication, and a bachelor's degree in psychology all from Boston University.