Big data in evaluation: Experiences from using Twitter analysis to evaluate Norway’s contribution to the peace process in Colombia

Social research has benefitted from big data and the evaluation community is embracing thinking and approaches that extract value from big data. This article describes how Twitter data was used in a recent evaluation of Norway’s contribution to the Colombian peace process brokered between the Government of Colombia and the FARC guerrilla group in 2012–2016. Sentiment analysis, key phrase extraction and social network analysis of tweets were helpful in evaluating this complex peace process. In this article, the authors present the purpose of the Twitter analysis and discuss the evaluation process. The article shares some lessons on how to conduct this type of analysis and reflects on its usefulness for evaluative purposes