ENGT5214 Research Proposal: Artificial Intelligence & Social Media

This research proposal investigates the multifaceted impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on social media platforms. It aims to analyze AI's effects, both positive and negative, on social media and to explore how marketers leverage AI for their strategies. The proposal outlines research questions concerning the overall impact of AI on social media, its specific advantages and disadvantages, and its applications in marketing. A literature review covers the definition of AI, its safety concerns, and its applications on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. The research methodology involves a descriptive research design, using both primary data collected through interviews with marketing professionals from UK supermarkets and secondary data from articles and journals. The study will employ a non-probability sampling method, focusing on marketing executives knowledgeable about AI and social media. Ethical considerations, including data protection and participant consent, are addressed. The research timeline spans seven months, with key activities including literature review, data collection, analysis, and report writing. The proposal highlights the importance of understanding AI's role in social media to improve marketing efforts and customer engagement. The study also acknowledges limitations in terms of budget and time constraints.

Running Head : RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Research Proposal
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Introduction
It is found that with more than 2.5 billion users have expected to have minimum one
social media channel by the end of the year 2018. Significantly, the marketers are rapidly
combining all of such platforms along with the technologies that are emerging to reach out to the
developing audiences. Hence, it is evident that the social media platforms are making use of the
AI and the marketers are availing all the benefits. With the development of the technologies,
there is a wide range of the tools that are being implemented in the whole race for winning the
customers on the social media. It does not stop at the acquisition of new customers only1.
Moreover, the artificial intelligence is seeing the way into the experience of the user having
created a better journey for the users. The artificial intelligence has evolved over half of the
century with a steady progress in development of computers that can manipulate the symbols.
Also, in the middle of the 1990’s the commercialization along with the diffusion of internet , the
exponential growth in the power of computation have come to the fore giving ‘intelligent agent’
a perfect definition. It can be said further that whether it is termed as an agent or defined as
virtual or artificial, these are some of the emerging applications and these are the product of
many technologies2. It can be the linguistic sciences, the voice recognition, the machine learning,
natural language processing, the predictive statistics, deep learning algorithms and many others.
The study will be aimed at analysing the impact of artificial intelligence on social media. The
analysis will also include the way marketers are availing the benefits of AI in terms of their
marketing.
The aims and objectives of the research
1 Dietterich, T.G., 2017. Steps toward robust artificial intelligence. AI Magazine, 38(3), pp.3-24.
2 Gao, J., Galley, M. and Li, L., 2019. Neural approaches to conversational ai. Foundations and Trends® in
Information Retrieval, 13(2-3), pp.127-298.

2RESEARCH PROPOSAL
 To analyse what are the impacts of the artificial intelligence on social media
 To highlight what are the positive impacts of AI on social media
 To highlight what are the negative impacts of AI on social media
 To elaborate some of the significant recommendations on how AI can be used through
social media for marketing purpose.
The research questions:
What are the impacts of artificial intelligence on social media as a whole?
What are the positive impacts of AI on the social media ?
What are the negative impacts of AI on the social media ?
What are the usages of AI through social media for marketing purpose?
Literature Review
The artificial intelligence
In the general sense, the AI is the computational tools which can substitute for the human
intelligence in terms of the performances of certain types of risk. This is the technology which is
advancing currently similar to the exponential growth that is experiences by some of the database
technologies in the later part of the nineteenth century3. The databases have developed for
becoming the core infrastructure driving enterprise level software. Equally, maximum value that
is added from the software over the coming of the decades to stay driven in parts by the AI4.
Sometimes, it is also called the machine intelligence that is in contrast to the natural intelligence.
3 Paul, P., Bhuiya, M.A.U.A., Ullah, M.A., Saqib, M.N., Mohammed, N. and Momen, S., 2019, August. A Modern
Approach for Sign Language Interpretation Using Convolutional Neural Network. In Pacific Rim International
Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 431-444). Springer, Cham.
4 Huang, M.H. and Rust, R.T., 2018. Artificial intelligence in service. Journal of Service Research, 21(2), pp.155-
172.

3RESEARCH PROPOSAL
The terms ‘artificial intelligence’ is use for describing the machines that actually mimic
‘cognitive; functions associated with the human mind as problem solving and learning. When the
machines become extremely capable, the tasks that are considered for requiring ‘intelligence’
removed often from the actual definition of AI.
The safety concerns of AI
The goals of keeping the impact of AI on the society concerns where the verification, the
security, the validity and the control are also concerned. It is also important that an AI systems
does whatever it is instructed to so and controls the machines when applied5. Through the
invention of revolutionary technologies might be useful for solving many of the issues in the
human history and so will the AI do. However, there are some of the safety concerns related to
the AI and its activities6. The privacy of the personal accounts stay vulnerable to the AI and
although AI is designed for doing something quite beneficial, there develops a destructive
method for the achievement of its goal. This might happen when people actually fail to align the
goals of AI with theirs which is difficult. It is also found that people such as Elon Musk, Stephen
Hawking, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak have expressed some of the concerns in media and through
the open letters regarding the risks posed by the AI7. The fact that AI has the potential of
becoming quite more intelligent than any such human, one has no such idea of predicting the
way it will behave.
Artificial Intelligence used on social media
5 Russell, S.J. and Norvig, P., 2016. Artificial intelligence: a modern approach. Malaysia; Pearson Education
Limited
6 Pallas, D., Tsoukalas, V. and Papoutsidakis, M., 2019. Artificial Intelligence Application in Performance of Engine
WIN GD XDF-72. Artificial Intelligence, 6(12).
7 Imran, M., Alam, F., Ofli, F. and Aupetit, M., 2017. Enabling rapid disaster response using artificial intelligence
and social media.

4RESEARCH PROPOSAL
AI is found to be the key component in any of the popular social networks one uses
everyday. Facebook makes use of the advanced machine learning for doing everything starting
with serving people the content for recognizing face in photos and targeting the users with some
advertises. On the other hand, Instagram that is owned by Facebook utilizes the AI for
identifying visuals. LinkdIn makes use of the AI in order to offer some job recommendations
suggesting people one might prefer to get connected with having served few specific posts in the
feed. Snapchat uses the AI for tracking one’ features and overlaying the filters which move with
the face in the real-time. These examples show the way AI works for powering the features of
the most popular social networks of the world. Also, across all of the platforms of social media,
the machine learning and the AI are regulating the way one’ created content and ads are placed
properly in front of the users. Most significantly, the marketers have started spending a lot of
time in the creation of the content for social media distribution and management of the
distribution with engagement across the channels8. Also, the traditional marketing automation
tools further help with this having streamlined the social media scheduling along with the
monitoring. The tools actually exist for auto-generating the social media completely across the
channels. The tools further exist to auto-scheduling the shares in a bulky proportion. As a whole,
the AI can easily handle few types of the social media creation along with the managements in
minutes9.
The social insights
There are undoubtedly a significant number of the AI-powered tools which exist for
delivering some insights starting with the social media profiles of the brands along with the
8 Jackson, P.C., 2019. Introduction to artificial intelligence. Courier Dover Publications.
9 Jarrahi, M.H., 2018. Artificial intelligence and the future of work: Human-AI symbiosis in organizational decision
making. Business Horizons, 61(4), pp.577-586

5RESEARCH PROPOSAL
audiences. Sometimes, it also consists of the power usage of AI for conducting the analysis of
the social media post at some scale. The data that is applied in the right manner allows the AI
further for helping in the tracking of the international equity of brand, identifying the customer
trends that are emerging, finding some new audiences for target, keeping the tabs on the brand
reputation and also recognizing new paths of promotion on social media. It is evidently found
that the companies are leveraging the social media and it is helping them for understanding the
buying decisions of their customers. The marketers are also personalizing the content for the
customers through understanding the habits of buying10. They are further personalizing the
content to the everyday environments of people along with whatever motivates them in making
their buying decisions.
Research Methodology
The research methodology is about different types of techniques used by a person during
the conduction of a research. The research methodology is actually the process or the procedure
of helping people in conduction of research in the most organized and systematized way. The
research methodology further allows the understanding of different techniques used in the
research.
Research Design
There are usually three types of investigation such as the exploratory, the descriptive and
hypothesis testing. The exploratory research investigation is well adopted at the time of not
having any specific idea about the research topic. This research can be properly conducted
10 Yang, K.C., Varol, O., Davis, C.A., Ferrara, E., Flammini, A. and Menczer, F., 2019. Arming the public with
artificial intelligence to counter social bots. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 1(1), pp.48-61.

6RESEARCH PROPOSAL
through the help of particular viewpoint. The descriptive research on the other hand is conducted
properly with the help of relevant concepts and theories. The hypothesis testing research is
developed and founded on the hypothesis for proving the hypothesis either suitable or unsuitable.
This study will make use of the descriptive research study where the relevant theories and
concepts will be considered while conducting the research.
Data collection
In this study both the primary and the secondary data will be used because in any
research to be conducted accurately, data is extremely significant. As the primary data or the
first-hand data, the interview method will be used (qualitative) that will enhance the depth of the
findings. On the other hand, the secondary data will also be used which is actually the data
which is gathered from the articles, the books or some journals containing some research
information. The primary data will be helpful for conducting the survey and receive the latest
information whereas the secondary data will help in using the information and theories that are
there in journals and books For this particular research, the primary data will be collected from
the marketing department of 5 selected supermarkets of UK. From the department, 10 people
will be interviewed for 2 hours in a group discussion and the interview will be recorded to be
analysed later. The interviewees will also be given a questionnaire hand-outs (hard copy) to be
filled up by them containing short multiple choice questions. Founded on their answers, the data
analysis part will be completed and exact results with recommendations will be provided. The
secondary data will also be used along with the primary.
The sampling method

7RESEARCH PROPOSAL
There are generally two different types of sampling methods for the completion of a
research process such as the probability and the non-probability. The probability sampling
method actually allows the sample selection along with the respondents on the basis of random
approach. This technique is extremely helpful for knowing the entire response of the group on a
specific topic. The non-probability sampling technique usually does not allow its selection of the
respondents quite randomly. The target respondents need to be known for this type of research.
For this particular research, the non-probability sampling method will be used and the marketing
executives from five supermarkets will be selected who would be well aware of AI and social
media for their marketing purpose.
The ethical considerations
During the conduction of the research, all the ethical issues will be maintained throughout
the whole process of research. As per the Data protection act of 1998, the privacy will be
maintained properly of the unpublished data. Also, the details of the respondents will not be
leaked and in case it happens, the researcher will be held liable for everything. The consent of
the participants will be taken before making them a part of the research.
Research Limitation
During the conduction of the research, there are certain limitations faced regarding the
budget, the time, the resources, participants and the equipment. In the current research, the
limitations are actually the budget and the time.
Timeline
Activity Months
M M M M M M M

8RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Jan Feb Mar April May June July
Finalizing the topic 
Collecting data from secondary
sources
 
Forming a layout of the research work 
Conducting Literature review   
Forming the research plan  
Selecting appropriate research
methodologies
 
Collecting data from primary sources  
Analysis of collected data sets  
Interpretation of collected data sets 
Concluding the Study 
Designing a rough draft  
Submitting the Final Work  

9RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Bibliography
Dietterich, T.G., 2017. Steps toward robust artificial intelligence. AI Magazine, 38(3), pp.3-24.
Gao, J., Galley, M. and Li, L., 2019. Neural approaches to conversational ai. Foundations and
Trends® in Information Retrieval, 13(2-3), pp.127-298.
Huang, M.H. and Rust, R.T., 2018. Artificial intelligence in service. Journal of Service Research,
21(2), pp.155-172.
Imran, M., Alam, F., Ofli, F. and Aupetit, M., 2017. Enabling rapid disaster response using
artificial intelligence and social media.
Jackson, P.C., 2019. Introduction to artificial intelligence. Courier Dover Publications.
Jarrahi, M.H., 2018. Artificial intelligence and the future of work: Human-AI symbiosis in
organizational decision making. Business Horizons, 61(4), pp.577-586.
Krittanawong, C., Zhang, H., Wang, Z., Aydar, M. and Kitai, T., 2017. Artificial intelligence in
precision cardiovascular medicine. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 69(21),
pp.2657-2664.
Pallas, D., Tsoukalas, V. and Papoutsidakis, M., 2019. Artificial Intelligence Application in
Performance of Engine WIN GD XDF-72. Artificial Intelligence, 6(12).
Paul, P., Bhuiya, M.A.U.A., Ullah, M.A., Saqib, M.N., Mohammed, N. and Momen, S., 2019,
August. A Modern Approach for Sign Language Interpretation Using Convolutional Neural
Network. In Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 431-444).
Springer, Cham.
Polani, D., 2017. Theory and Practice of Artificial Intelligence.

10RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Romanov, V.A., Egorov, A.I., Mitrokhinа, S.V. and Kormakova, V.N., 2017. Development of
conflictological competence in future teachers: modern approach. News of Science and
Education, 5(2), pp.3-6.
Russell, S.J. and Norvig, P., 2016. Artificial intelligence: a modern approach. Malaysia; Pearson
Education Limited,.
Yang, K.C., Varol, O., Davis, C.A., Ferrara, E., Flammini, A. and Menczer, F., 2019. Arming the
public with artificial intelligence to counter social bots. Human Behavior and Emerging
Technologies, 1(1), pp.48-61.