3 October 2013: coi, standards

COI and social media – a literature review by New Zealand’s Country Research Branch

The paper

is part of a project by the Country Research Branch (CRB) of Immigration New Zealand. The purpose of the project is to develop a consistent and robust approach to the use of information sourced from social media in our research. This paper is intended as a starting point for discussion, rather than a conclusive summary of all the issues. Ultimately, a set of in-house researcher guidelines on the use of social media in country of origin information (COI) research will be the main project output.

The scope of this literature review extends beyond COI units and includes a discussion of relevant guidelines and practice from other disciplines: news media, legal proceedings and the field of open source intelligence. The review looks at each of these disciplines’ approaches to user-generated information, and considers how thesemay or may not apply to COI researchers and the development of CRB’s own guidelines.

We thank the Country Research Branch for kindly granting us permission to publish the paper. You can read it here:

Country Research Branch, Immigration New Zealand, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment: Country of Origin Information and Social Media – Literature Review – Executive Summary, October 2013