Opinion mining and research companies to give evidence to Lords Committee on polling

The evidence session will take place at 10.45am in Committee Room 2 of the House of Lords and the Committee will hear from:

• Deborah Mattinson, Co-Founder, BritainThinks
• Jean Pierre Kloppers, CEO, BrandsEye.

Questions the Committee is likely to ask include:

• What advantages do you think analysis of social media offers compared to conventional polling?
• What are the implications of the rise of social media on the way conventional polling is conducted and reported?
• How will social media tools be used by politicians and voters in elections in the future?
• What are the primary motivations of groups who commission opinion polls? Is there sufficient information available about who commissions and pays for polls?
• Does media coverage of opinion polls focus too much on the ‘horse race' and not enough on policy differences between parties? How could this be remedied?
• If social media data is to be increasingly used in the future to inform predictions about the outcomes of elections, what are the implications for the way in which political opinion polling is regulated?
•  Could more regulations ensure that political opinion polling based on social media data is responsibly produced and accurately reported on?

The evidence session will start at 10:45am on Tuesday 10 October in Committee Room 2 of the House of Lords.