In 2015, at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly, a new development agenda was adopted with transformative goals --the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs or Global Goals). Over 160 Heads of State and Government, alongside many leaders of civil society and active citizens attended. The scale and importance of this year’s UNGA provided UNICEF and its partners the opportunity to push the agenda for children and equity forward. The Sustainable Development agenda, which includes 17 goals for the next 15 years until 2030, is ambitious and is broader, complex and more challenging in some ways than the MDGs. The agenda provides a framework that places a greater focus on partnerships, new technologies and resources. Technology and shifts in power are transforming the way people interact with one another, in their communities and with their leaders. With this historical moment of the Global Goals adoption, UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) wanted to identify the main conversations around the SDGs and the networks of people and individual influencers in order to inform our communication plans/strategy as well as measure our efforts in influencing digital conversations.

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Case Study
Joint Research Project
between UNICEF and the
Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation
The digital conversation during the 2015
UN General Assembly and the
Sustainable Development Summit
14 October 2015

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Division of Communication
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
3 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY, 10017
www.unicef.org

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At a glance
Background
In 2015, at the 70th
Session of the UN General Assembly, a new
development agenda was adopted with transformative goals --
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs or Global Goals).
Over 160 Heads of State and Government, alongside many
leaders of civil society and active citizens attended. The scale
and importance of this year’s UNGA provided UNICEF and its
partners the opportunity to push the agenda for children and
equity forward.
The Sustainable Development agenda, which includes 17 goals
for the next 15 years until 2030, is ambitious and is broader,
complex and more challenging in some ways than the MDGs.
The agenda provides a framework that places a greater focus
on partnerships, new technologies and resources. Technology
and shifts in power are transforming the way people interact
with one another, in their communities and with their leaders.
With this historical moment of the Global Goals adoption,
UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)
wanted to identify the main conversations around the SDGs
and the networks of people and individual influencers in order
to inform our communication plans/strategy as well as measure
our efforts in influencing digital conversations.
#EveryChild
#GlobalGoals
#UNGA
#SDGs

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Strategy & implementation
Establishing parameters for research
The joint research project endeavoured to understand the topics discussed; the key authors driving
conversations; the share of voice of UNICEF, BMGF and other partners in the conversation; and the social
impact the announcement of the goals had.
The reporting looked at the various topics of the 17 goals and through joint collaboration developed a set of
queries that incorporated key words and hashtags. For UNICEF’s comparative purposes, these topics were
then further refined to identify children’s issues within these conversations. Although social media
conversations were predominately in English, French and Spanish conversations were also tracked and
analysed. The project had several reporting milestones, including just prior to the commencement of the UN
General Assembly, another report a week after it closed and a third report with a final deeper analysis
delivered three weeks later.
Social Media Monitoring Measurement
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contracted with the Gorkana Group and Brandwatch to develop the
queries along with UNICEF and Gorkana provided three reports, as outlined above. The 17 goals were
grouped into 11 topics: Poverty, Gender Issues, Climate Change, Food & Nutrition, Education, Justice &
Human Rights, Innovation, Peace & Security, Economy & Employment, Natural World, and Health & Well-
being. The analysis was conducted using a random sample of 10% of the conversations by topic in order to
see the overall increase/decrease in topical conversations. While a general query was utilized in analysing
100% of data on all messages using the general terms of #SDGs, #GlobalGoals and #UNGA. Over 3 million
mentions were analysed during the reporting period.
Screens with real-time data were set up inside the We The Peoples media hub in the UN secretariat and UNICEF House.

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Piloting deep social media network analysis
Through colleagues in UNICEF’s Brazil Country Office, the joint project team piloted deep network analysis
with, Social Figures, a company whose tool, BrandCare, identifies network influencers. Using the same
parameters as above, their social network analysis was able to find and analyse influencers and connectors;
analyse the information flow; clusters and communities, as well as measure impact of the conversations
during the SDGs, all disaggregated by topic, share of voice, and by discussions related to children’s issues.
This provided essential information of how key messages were being shared and what users/outlets were
amplifying those messages.
Social Figures provided social network analysis to identify influencers and activators that engaged around the Global Goals before, during and
after the SDGS Summit in New York.
Progress & results
Visualizing the data
Brandwatch provided the platform, Vizia, which delivered dynamic, animated and interactive visual dashboard
displays of our real-time monitoring in UNICEF’s content media studio in the UN plaza and at UNICEF House.
Visualizing the conversations made social data visible and actionable by providing a clear understanding of
what resonated within SGDs conversations, who were the influencers and what key messages had velocity. As
general debates, the SDG Summit and other events took place, we saw in real-time how they affected the
relevance of the tracked topics, saw real-time tweets of celebrity involvement and watched them be
retweeted with astonishing speed.
UNICEF’s Content Studio
UNICEF’s Content Studio was part of the ‘The We the Peoples’ Hub which was a dynamic space co-run with
UNDP’s Millennium Campaign set up to help connect decision-makers attending the UNGA and SDG summit
and their constituents, especially children and young people. Visitors were able to explore a multi-media
exhibition of interactive data-visualizations on the new sustainable agenda; experience the daily life of people
in vulnerable situations via Virtual Reality films; participate in interviews with youth, and be part of real-time
social media engagement to amplify messaging beyond the UN.

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The Content Studio provided a collaborative space for UNICEF’s social & multimedia staff and
communications professionals from the Weber Shandwick agency to create compelling social media content
around the most talked about/child-relevant moments at the UN General Assembly and SDGs Summit, in real
time and to be shared across all UNICEF’s social media channels. The team, as well as visitors, were able to
utilize the Vizia dashboards on a video wall of four screens within the Hub that displayed compelling content,
tracked the prominence of topics and the share of voice among the many actors during the UNGA.
Challenges
Coordinating these efforts across multiple vendors, for multiple applications (visualizations in two locations
and pre-, during- and post- reporting) and providing relevant feedback for two organizations with similar but
different levels of engagement took foresight, dedication and openness of information sharing that made this
effort a success. In additional, most of the actors coordinating the analysis and research work were in various
locations and time zones (BMGF in Seattle; the Gorkana group in London; UNICEF and Brandwatch in New
York; and UNICEF’s country office and Social Figures in Brazil).
It took organization, negotiation and teamwork to track the right hashtags/ topics that were relevant to
UNICEF. This internal coordination proved challenging at times as it required coordination with many sections
both within and outside of DOC while the queries and tracking were being updated as the conversation
developed. We ran the risk of affecting the accuracy of our conclusions and required multiple iterations of the
query building while coordinating with multiple service providers and partners to ensure we produced the
right outputs for analysis.
Conclusion
The events around the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly and the announcement of the new
development agenda, the SDGs, sparked a large volume of conversations from various actors. Throughout
the joint research project implementation, the intent was to present the metrics and their measurement in a
clear and transparent way so that both UNICEF and BMGF could understand and leverage the momentum
that this years’ UNGA provided with the potential to influence social movements. UNICEF’s partnerships with
international Goodwill Ambassadors with large digital media followers greatly increased the conversation
around children and the SDGs. UNICEF, once again, positioned itself as a leading voice for children and drove
the conversations related to children’s issues on digital media about the new Global Goals.
Ultimately, the joint research project was an opportunity to forge greater engagement with partners through
both the dedication and expertise of the Brazil country office and with partners such as the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation.

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About us
The Strategic Planning and Communication Support section ensures that UNICEF’s global
communication initiatives are well planned, coordinated, adequately resourced and of the
highest quality, so we deliver the best possible results on the ground.
The Planning, Research, Analysis and M&E unit within the Strategic Planning and
Communication Support section leads DOC in strategic planning; coordinates detailed
analysis and insights of UNICEF´s communication and public advocacy initiatives; and
oversees the integration of the monitoring and evaluation framework of the Global
Communication and Public Advocacy Strategy at both the global and country office levels.
Contact us
Arturo Romboli
Planning Specialist
aromboli@unicef.org
Arissa Sidoti
Communication Specialist
asidoti@unicef.org
Dounia Kchiere
M&E - Project Coordinator
dkchiere@unicef.org

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