Study: Transit Agencies Should Respond to the Haters

Conventional wisdom says not to feed the trolls—the antagonistic group of naysayers and critics with nothing nice to say on the Internet—but a recent study by University of Southern California professor Lisa Schweitzer finds evidence that transit agencies might be better served by responding to online commentary.

Andrew Keatts reports on the study, summing up its findings: "transit agencies might not want to just bury their heads in the sand. Agencies that engage directly with Twitter users, rather than simply blasting out service announcements, end up seeing significantly more positive discussions about them on the social media service…"

Keatts details the findings of the study, which includes an analysis of 64,000 tweets about public transit agencies—most of them bad. The key takeaway for transit agencies, however, is that they aren't helpless in the face of this criticism.