Methodology – Social Media Jamaica

Social Media Jamaica Brand Intelligence

Trust is the product. This page explains where our numbers come from, how we analyse Jamaican conversation, what our confidence levels mean, and how to request a correction.

Data sources

Platform advertising planning tools, public profile data collected on fixed schedules, regulator and statistical office publications, and the SMJ social listening panel of public Jamaican conversation. Private accounts and private messages are never collected.

Analysis methods

Sentiment is classified into six categories — positive, negative, neutral, mixed, sarcastic or ambiguous, and requires human review — using the Jamaican Social Language Dictionary plus analyst review of hard cases. Rankings use identical collection windows for every account.

Confidence levels

Each published figure carries a confidence note. High: directly reported by a platform or regulator. Medium: derived from ad-reach tools with known rounding. Low: modelled estimates, always labelled as such. Small sectors carry wider intervals.

Language limitations

Patois sarcasm, humour, and code switching are genuinely hard to classify. We publish our estimated error rate, route ambiguous posts to human review, and never report sentiment for samples too small to be meaningful.

Privacy standards

We analyse public conversation in aggregate. We do not publish personal data of private individuals, do not track individuals across platforms, and comply with the Jamaican Data Protection Act. Quoted posts in public reports are anonymised unless from a public figure or brand account.

Corrections process

Found an error? Email corrections@socialmediajamaica.com with the report name and figure. Verified corrections are published within five working days, with the original and corrected value both shown. We keep a public log of corrections.

Data confidence levels

Every creator, brand, report, and trend page can carry a confidence label. Definitions:

High

Official APIs, verified accounts, official reports, or multiple corroborated sources.

Medium

Reliable public or authorized sources with known coverage limits.

Emerging

Early signals, limited volume, or recently identified trends.

Limited

Directional information that should not be considered definitive measurement.

Data policy: no paid data subscriptions

Social Media Jamaica does not use paid social listening platforms, paid creator databases, or paid research panels. Every figure on this site comes from one of the following:

Official public data — government, statistical office, and international agency sources (e.g. STATIN, the World Bank, the ITU).
Publicly observed data — free official platform APIs reading public information (e.g. YouTube subscriber counts, public hashtag activity).
Creator authorized data / Brand authorized data — metrics from accounts whose owners have connected them to SMJ.
First party survey data — SMJ's own newsletter, website, and campaign surveys.
Social Media Jamaica modelled estimate — a calculation SMJ derives from the sources above, always labelled as such.
Emerging trend signal — an automatically detected rise in conversation volume, pending editorial review.
Limited public coverage — directional information that should not be read as a definitive national measurement.

We do not collect private accounts, private messages, WhatsApp content, closed groups, data about minors, or individual political or risk profiles.