Research among Journalists and Social Media KOLs
Our experience
The world has never been as connected as it is now. It is now very easy to engage with millions of people using something as simple and informal as your Twitter handle or your Facebook page. Similarly, many more people go for information to the web and it is important to engage with them, much as you would any important stakeholder.
It would be a mistake, though, to forget traditional journalists who are still gatekeepers for most consumers of information. Print and broadcast journalists also carry a level of credibility that few social media figures can manage.
Baird’s CMC can research the networks and the influence of both new and traditional media opinion leaders. This work helps you to target resources of those who really can change ideas and behaviour in your key target audiences.
Baird’s CMC counts among its network a diverse array of journalists and social media key opinion leaders (KOLs).
The journalists in our network have decades of experience covering and researching policy issues on a wide variety of topics including access to innovative medicine, vaccine uptake and compulsory licensing. Many of them have written award winning books and all of them have key networks and relationships with other senior journalists, policymakers, bureaucrats, activists and civil society members who are a key component in policy-making decisions.
What we’ve done
- A policy research exercise for a global pharmaceutical company on issues relating to access to innovative oncology medicine in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Russia, China, India, South Africa, Indonesia and Turkey. Baird’s CMC conducted research with policy makers, doctors and activists as well as with journalists and social media KOLs
- A research project for a major pharmaceutical company on the Hepatitis C situation in Egypt. Research for the project included interviews with journalists and social media KOLs based in Egypt as well as a curated list of NGOs doing good work in the Hepatitis C space in Egypt
- An HIV media monitoring exercise for a large international company in Greece, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Iraq, which included monitoring traditional media such as newspapers and magazines. We helped pick out the few that could really swing policy on a sensitive issue. We kept track of blogs, facebook groups and online health sites as both early warnings and a way of measuring reactions to a fast-changing situation
- Identifying stakeholders and interviewing them about likely interactions on the use of new technology in preventing HIV infections for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago in collaboration with the Naz Foundation India, the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation and RAND