With moveable TVs on the walls, a touch screen control table and cushions for seating, sitting in the the Manship School of Mass Communication’s new Social Media Analysis and Creation Lab feels like sitting in a classroom from the future.
The SMAC Lab gives students and faculty a place to track and create social media content using Harvard University’s Crimson Hexagon Software. Director of the Manship Digital Media Initiative and mass communication associate professor Lance Porter experimented with different softwares before choosing Crimson Hexagon.
“It allows you to measure levels of social media conversation, identify content that’s trending and also do some sentiment analysis,” Porter said. “It’s better than any other platform I’ve experimented with.”
Porter said the SMAC Lab was the last item on a list of ten goals to improve the Manship School’s digital offerings. A Digital Media Initiative committee formed the list after doing extensive research and visiting sites all over the United States to see what other schools were doing.
“[We were] talking to people about what do you think the future holds and what should we do to prepare our students for it,” Porter said.
While brands like Gatorade and American Red Cross have social media analysis centers, the University is one of the only colleges to house a social media analysis and creation lab.
Porter said students and faculty have experimented in the lab. One student used the SMAC Lab to analyze the Black Lives Matter movement on social media.
The software tracked the frequency with which people were talking about the movement and common words used in association with it which were displayed in a word cloud. The software can even measure whether the conversations about the movement were positive, negative or neutral.
Among many other features, the software can also track the location of conversation and data changes within certain areas. Porter said the software can even be programmed to recognize patterns and learn to categorize certain trends.
Other studies conducted in the lab include an analysis of the 2015 Louisiana gubernatorial election and the Iran nuclear deal. One professor used Crimson Hexagon to analyze people’s reactions to the deaths of certain TV characters.
Some classes, such as Digital Storytelling, are being conducted in the lab because of their strong focus on social media. In the future, Porter said he hopes the Manship School will be able to offer a few courses related to social media in the SMAC Lab so students can receive some sort of social media certification after completing the series of classes.
“If you’re interested in social media and you’re here at LSU, you should come here to build stuff or do research,” Porter said. “That’s what we hope to accomplish.”

Gallery • 3 Photos

Greta Jines

A Twitter feed is displayed on one of several large screens Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in the Social Media Analysis and Creation (SMAC) Lab located in Hodges Hall.