Social Media Analysis during Natural Disasters
Following his article Using Data and Statistics to Bring Down Dictators, Forbes Contributor Federico Guerrini wrote another interesting article titled How Researchers Use Social Media To Map The Conflict In Syria.
His article also mentions the The Syria Conflict Mapping Project, an initiative launched by the Carter Center's Conflict Resolution Program.
This website contains a sample analysis of about half a million tweets related to violence, natural disasters, accidents, etc. Please note that this information is limited to geocoded tweets, which still represents a minor percentage of all tweets. Queries are limited to the top 1,000 tweets by keyword or by geographic area.
Social media can be a great indicator of many global phenomenons in the world. However, analyzing the tremendous amount of content in order to extract useful information is still a challenging task.
We are currently developing on a parsing algorithm that will allow users to scan Social Media feeds such as twitter and decide whether the post is related to a Natural Disaster or is just a common expression.
Examples of this work can be found at the following location: