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Irene Vega
When examining a social network, there are multiple contrasting statistical analyses. However, it is very difficult to find a platform that can be used by any user and apply these analyzes in a simple way without technical knowledge.
To solve this lack, a URJC research team has worked on the design of an open source platform (open-source) that allows the analysis of a set of messages on Twitter (tweets) to draw conclusions that could be relevant to all stakeholders. Some of the resources provided by this platform are tag analysis (hashtags), activity geomaps, sentiment analysis, user networks and tweets, and application of machine learning techniques (machine learning) to group messages on specific topics. Furthermore, being a tool open-source it is also possible to add new types of visualizations that adapt to the needs of the user.
The results of this work They are part of the CS-Track project, which aims to analyze the data available in different media in order to measure the impact of citizen science initiatives in different areas. “Thanks to the designed tool we have been able to analyze different conversations around citizen science. For example, one of the first conclusions was that Twitter is rarely used by this type of initiative in teaching tasks and that it was mainly used to show results or the evolution of a task within the project", explains David Roldán, co-author of the study. and researcher at the Higher Technical School of Telecommunications Engineering.
Although the project is focused on citizen science initiatives, the platform developed is not restricted solely to this field, but it is possible to use any data source with tweets and users to analyze and visualize the different stories that these publications tell.
Analysis of conversations on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Through the analysis of citizen science conversations on Twitter, the research team has discovered, as reported in a published work in the scientific journal Digital Health, that one of the main concerns of users (beyond COVID-19) is how mosquitoes spread diseases, with the third most important topic being mental illness. All these issues are closely related to SDG 3 (Health and well-being) and 6 (Water and sanitation).
Furthermore, other works The scientific team has also observed that SDG 13 (Climate Action) dominated a large part of the conversations in citizen science, while others such as SDG 1 (No poverty) or SDG 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure ) were not paid attention to.