Socio-Economic Impact at CERN - Social Media and Onsite CERN visitors

The results of CERN's activities have directly influenced society and improved it. Nowadays, it is impossible to imagine life without the WWW, without high-resolution medical imaging that is built on top of high-field superconducting magnet technologies conceived for research particle accelerators or technological innovations in the treatment of cancer.

What is the measurable economic value of the socio - economic impact of CERN’s activities?

This master thesis sheds light on this question by explor in one subset of economic value generation that is directly linked to CERN’s research programme with particle accelerators. It concerns in particular the estimation of the magnitude of different social and cultural domains. On one hand, social areas on the Internet such as the following are be analysed:

• Videos on the YouTube platform, which talk about LHC.
• Contributions that have been written on social media such as Twitter and Facebook about CERN’s research programme.
• The number of visitors to CERN’s websites.

On the other hand, the economic impact on onsite CERN visitors are be examined methodically and in detail, differentiating between group and private trips. The goal is to obtain an estimate for the economic value generated through spending of CERN visitors produced between June 2018 until May 2019.