Time for events: telling the world's stories from social media

Опубликовано 15 апреля 2013, 10:26

Mor Naaman, ECIR 2013

An overwhelming amount of information from real-world events is shared by individuals through social media services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. These events range from major global events like an uprising or an earthquake, to local events and emergencies such as a fire or a parade; from international media events like the Oscar's, to events that enjoy little media coverage such as a conference or a music concert. This shared media represents an important part of our society, culture and history. At the same time, this social media event content is currently fragmented across services, hard to find, and often difficult to consume due to its sheer scale. Our work tackles three critical challenges in making social media information about events accessible and usable:

1)the detection of events in social media content,

2)Identification and ranking of content relevant to an event across social media sites, and

3) organization and presentation of event data to allow users to effectively explore, analyze, and experience an event through its social media content.

Our work results in new tools that allow multiple stakeholders, such as journalists, first responders, researchers, policy makers and the general public, to see and understand the stories of world, as told in social media.