Cybersecurity researchers building alert-generating systems to detect security threats and vulnerabilities, wildfire watchers tracking the spread of wildfires, and public health professionals trying to predict enrollment on health insurance exchanges. What do houses have in common?
This story also appeared in The Conversation
They all rely on analyzing data from Twitter.
Twitter is a microblogging service. In other words, it’s designed to share short text segments and embedded audio and video clip posts. Twitter is very popular for real-time conversations because it allows you to easily share information with millions of people around the world. Whether it’s people tweeting about their favorite sports teams, or organizations and celebrities using Twitter to reach large audiences, Twitter has been part of his collective record for over a decade. .
twitter Archives allow immediate and complete access This positions Twitter not only as an archive of collective human behavior, but also as a global authentication and fact-checking service. As researchers who study social media, we believe these features are of great value to academics, policy makers, and anyone using aggregate data to gain insight into human behavior.
Widespread fraud and brand impersonation, advertiser bleeding, and internal turmoil have put the platform’s future in question. If Twitter went bankrupt, the loss would ripple around the world.
analyze human behavior
Twitter uses the sheer volume of tweets to provide new ways to quantify public discourse and new tools to map collective perceptions, providing a window into human behavior at scale. . Such digital traces or records of human activity enable researchers in fields ranging from social sciences to medicine to analyze a wide variety of phenomena.
From open source intelligence to citizen science, Twitter is not only a digital public square, but it has also enabled researchers to infer attitudes that are difficult to detect with traditional field research methods. For example, people’s willingness to pay for policies and services that address climate change has traditionally been measured through subjective well-being surveys. Twitter sentiment data provides another tool for researchers and policy makers to assess these attitudes in order to take more meaningful action on climate change.
Public health researchers find links between tweets about HIV and HIV incidence, measuring sentiment at the local level to assess the overall health of people in the community. is ready.
place and time
Geotagged data from Twitter can be useful in many areas, such as urban land use and disaster resilience. The location of a series of tweets can be determined, allowing researchers to associate information within the tweets with time and place. For example, you can associate tweets with zip codes to identify hot spots of vaccine hesitancy.
Twitter has played an invaluable role in the field of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), especially in tracking war crimes. OSINT uses crowdsourcing to locate photos and videos. In Ukraine, human rights investigators focus on using Twitter and TikTok to look for evidence of human rights violations.
Open source intelligence has also helped us navigate the fog of war. For example, OSINT analysts said the missile that exploded near Poland’s Ukrainian border on November 15, 2022 was likely an S-300 anti-aircraft missile, and could have been a Russian-launched ballistic or cruise missile. quickly provided evidence that is low.
So what crashed today in the Polish village of Przewodow?
with the help of @blueboy1969 Having analyzed the available photographs of the fragments, I came to the unequivocal conclusion that they belong to the 48D6 motor (Ukrainian) of the 5V55 series missiles of the S-300 AD system. pic.twitter.com/f0Ex3USLN8
— 🇺🇦 Ukrainian Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 15, 2022
Credentials and verification
Misinformation is widely circulated on Twitter, but the platform also serves as a global verification mechanism. First, huge numbers of people use Twitter and other social media platforms. With the growing power of crowdsourcing, social media has assumed the role of trusted information provider, reducing some of the uncertainty people face when searching for new information. In that the platform replaces dedicated business or technical expertise to identify what people need to know, it acts as a credential that some academics call “public association algorithms.” .
Another method is official certification. Prior to Elon Musk’s takeover, Twitter’s verification method offered public figures with blue checkmarks on their profiles.
While issues such as fake news, misinformation, and hate speech exist, authentication capabilities, coupled with the sheer number of people using the platform in real time, have made Twitter a trusted source of information and fact-checker. rice field.
digital square
Twitter’s dual role of facilitating real-time communication and mediating authoritative information is of great importance to academics, journalists and government agencies. For example, during the pandemic, many public health agencies turned to Twitter to encourage actions to reduce the risk of infection.
During disasters and emergencies, Twitter has become a great place for crowdsourced eyewitness data. For example, during Hurricane Harvey, researchers found that users interacted and reacted the most to verified Twitter accounts, especially tweets from government agencies. The official Twitter account helped quickly disseminate information during the water pollution crisis in West Virginia. Twitter data also helped hurricane evacuation.
Twitter is also an important way for people with disabilities to participate in public debate.
The real value of Twitter is that it allows people to connect with each other in real time and as an archive of collective action. Recognizing this, international organizations, government agencies, and local governments have invested significant resources in using Twitter and have become dependent on the platform. Senator Edward Markey has said Twitter is “essential” to American society. If Twitter collapses, there will be no clear successor in sight.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Please read the original article.
