In today’s digital world, social media is no longer just a space for people to interact online. It has become a place where anyone can freely voice opinions, share thoughts, respond to each other, and collectively shape meanings or narratives around issues. A single post can trigger thousands—even millions—of engagements from around the world, influencing public opinion as well as business and governmental decisions.

Behind all the noise happening online, brands and organizations need a deeper understanding of the dynamics of public conversation and the direction in which narratives evolve.

This is where social analytics comes in. A data-driven approach powered by social media monitoring provides the foundation for shaping narrative strategy, public perception, and sentiment.

What Is Social Analytics?

Social analytics (or Social Media Analytics) is the process of analyzing data from social media to understand the meaning behind digital conversations what narratives are forming, how the public perceives an issue or brand, and how sentiment shifts over time.

Unlike social media monitoring, which focuses on gathering data, social analytics emphasizes deeper contextual understanding behind the monitored information.

This approach combines language analysis, network analysis, and conversational trends to answer key questions such as:

• How is the public narrating an issue or brand?
• Is their perception moving positively, negatively, or staying neutral?
• What factors are driving changes in opinion?

Understanding narrative, perception, and sentiment allows brands and organizations to read the direction of public conversation more accurately and respond with relevant communication strategies.

The Role of Dataxet Sonar in Social Analytics

As one of the pioneers of Social Listening in Indonesia, Dataxet Sonar helps brands and organizations understand how public opinion forms, shifts, and impacts their online reputation.

Through a social analytics approach, Dataxet Sonar turns data into insights that support communication strategy, reputation management, and decision-making. Its system consists of two complementary components:

• DXT360 A social media monitoring platform that collects and visualizes millions of conversations across digital channels—social media, online news, forums, and video platforms. DXT360 helps organizations see what the public is talking about, who is driving the conversation, and how narratives evolve over time.

• DXT Solutions – An analytics and communication consultancy service focused on transforming DXT360 data into strategic reports and actionable recommendations. Through its team of analysts and communication practitioners, Dataxet Sonar helps clients understand the context behind the data—producing trend reports, issue studies, and communication strategy reports for PR teams, brand teams, and management.

Through this synergy, Dataxet Sonar not only provides digital conversation data but also acts as an expert analyst for organizations—interpreting narrative direction and supporting strategic, adaptive, and relevant communication.

How Narratives Form in the Digital World

Narratives are shaped through recurring conversations that spread from small groups (communities or individuals) to larger audiences (media, influencers, etc.), eventually leading to virality. With social analytics, brands and organizations can transform raw data into insights that reveal how a narrative forms, spreads, and shifts. For example:

• When a new product launches, early conversations may focus on design (“unique,” “modern”).
• Days later, attention may shift to price (“expensive,” “not worth it”). Then, it may shift again to user experience (“hard to use”).

Through this analysis, communication teams can clearly understand the flow of public conversation—curiosity, excitement, and eventually criticism. These insights help brands adjust messaging to keep the narrative on a positive path.

Public narratives are not just about what people say, but how they frame meaning around it.

How to Read Public Perception

Persepsi publik is shaped by people’s experiences and interpretations of an issue, organization, brand, or individual. Social analytics measures the words most frequently associated with a subject—words that collectively form perception and sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral).

Examples:

• If a bank is often associated with “easy,” “safe,” and “comfortable,” public perception is likely positive.
• If dominant terms include “error,” “queues,” or “difficult,” perception begins to shift negatively.

Perception analysis helps organizations understand their position in the public’s mind and identify factors influencing their image. Shifts in perception over time also indicate campaign effectiveness, crisis responses, or competitor influence.

What Is Public Sentiment?

Public sentiment is an indicator that measures the direction of public opinion and perception. It helps brands and organizations understand whether people are angry, disappointed, supportive, or enthusiastic about an issue.

Social Listening systems in Indonesia, such as Dataxet Sonar, use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify the tone of conversations. But Indonesian language context presents unique challenges—words often hold multiple meanings depending on usage.

For example: “Parah” can mean bad (“pelayanannya parah banget”) Or positive (“keren parah!”)

With AI technology, DXT360 can recognize sentence patterns and local nuances, ensuring sentiment analysis remains accurate in Indonesia’s dynamic linguistic environment.

Sentiment results help communication and PR teams understand public opinion in real time. DXT360’s alert feature also signals sudden spikes in conversations—especially those trending toward negative sentiment.

From Insight to Strategy: The Real Benefits of Social Analytics

When Social Media Monitoring data is processed through Social Analytics, organizations can move beyond listening into strategic action. Key benefits include:

1. Early Detection of Issues and Crises

Sudden shifts in narrative or sentiment can be early crisis signals. Social Analytics helps teams identify “anomalous conversations” and respond before issues escalate.

2. Campaign and Reputation Evaluation

After a campaign, narrative and perception analysis shows whether the message was received as intended—or whether counter-narratives emerged that need to be addressed.

3. Influencer and Community Mapping

Social Analytics identifies who plays a major role in spreading narratives, helping brands choose collaborations that are more targeted and effective.

4. Decision-Making Support

For public institutions, Social Analytics reveals how citizens react to new policies. For brands, these insights help craft communication strategies, content, and product innovations aligned with customer expectations.

Kesimpulan: Dari Mendengar ke Memahami

Social media is the space where opinions and perceptions about issues, brands, organizations, and individuals are formed. With vast, organic, and uncontrollable conversations happening online, continuous monitoring and analysis are essential to follow the direction of public opinion.

Through social analytics, brands—and even individuals—can quickly translate public opinion shifts into communication strategies that remain impactful and relevant.