Real-time Social Media Analytics through Semantic Annotation and

Linked Open DataDiana Maynard, Mark Greenwood, Ian Roberts,

George Windsor and Kalina Bontcheva

What sentiments areexpressed?

Collector

Backup

Processor

GATEEmbedded

GATEímirM

Queue

Real-Time Big Data Analysis

Data collection via Twitter streaming APIDocuments stored as JSON and annotated via GCPDocuments indexed via MIMIRSearch and visualisation via MIMIR/Prospector

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What kind of questionscan we answer?

Find all positive sentiment expressions aboutthe “UK economy” theme in tweets written byLabour candidates for constituencies in GreaterLondon”.

Which political issues do people care about themost? Which ones do they engage with andwhy?

Which party's manifesto is the most positive,and how does this influence public voting?

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Sentiment visualisation: where didMiliband go wrong?

Main topics and related sentiment of discussion on Twitter generatedby the #Leadersdebate, between the leaders of the 7 main parties.

Milliband was negative about the economy and the NHS

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Topic visualisation

Where did people talk aboutthe economy?

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Research partially supported by the European Union/ EU under the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) theme of the 7th Framework Programme for R&D (FP7) DecarboNet (610829) http://www.decarbonet.eu and Nesta http://nesta.org.uk

Semantics is Crucial!Information isn't always explicit in the text

We need semantic information in order toaggregate knowledge, e.g. all tweets from MPs in a certain geographical region

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Climate change is less boringthan other political topicsClimate change isn't mentioned frequentlyby politicians

But it shows high levels of engagement: - frequent retweets - contains sentiment - optimistic - contains URLs and @mentions

People engage more with climate change than other topicsbecause they feel they can actively contribute

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Analysing Social Media

Real-time social media analytics needed by journalists,companies, governments etc.

Processing and understanding text from social mediais hard: messages are often brief, ungrammatical,and noisy

Interpretation is heavily dependent on temporal,geographical, and social network context

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Political Futures Tracker

SentimentAnalysis

MimirSemantic

Index

Linked data(DBpedia,

YourNextMP,NUTS)

TopicDetection

MP /Candidate

Recognition

TokenizerNormalizerPart-of-SpeechTagger

NamedEntity

Recognizer News

lmono rustu x GATE

abac defg hijik

011010010110

general architecture

for text engineering

-20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120

UK economy

Media and communications

Wales

Scotland

Regulation reform

Children and young people

Higher education

Borders and immigration

National Health Service

Public health

Number of Tweets Expressing Negative Sentiment Positive Sentiment

#ge2015#leadersdebate

#bbcdebate

#snp

#labour

#ukip

#ge15

#plaid15

#votesnp

#snpout

#registertovote

#generationvote#cosplay

#cameron

#voteconservative

#bbcdp

#election2015

#nhs

#manifesto

#tories

#conservative#libdems #janner

#scotland

#conservativemanifesto

#conservatives

#bbcqt

#glasgow

#genderequality

#generalelection

#miliband

#greensurge

#bbcbreakfast

#votesnpgetsexy

#vote

#carecrisis

#peoplenotpolls#libdemmanifesto

#lordjanner

#askbbchugh

#1milliondisabledscovotes

#believeinbritain

#tory

#sexysocialism

#chickendave

#indyref

#csainquiry

#ukpoverty

#murdoch

#stillyes

#votelabour

#ukipm

anifesto

#leanne15

#ukhousing

#callclegg

#greens

#covdebate

#votegreen2015

#votesnpgetscotland

#skills

#manufacturing

#mymanifesto

#uk

#angryed

#victorialive

#challengersdebate

#invisibledave

#voteukip

#righttobuy

#cameronmustgo

#modernpolitics

#tacticalvote

#hustings

#sheffieldissuper

#housing

#5moreyearsfordc

#wheresdave#team

nigel

#plaidcymru

#hookm

eaduck

#streatham

#massdebate

#signedbus

#skynew

s

#ncapm

#clegg

#banksy

#votematch

#toriesout

#london

#iamanimmigrant

#politics

#welfare

#1pun

#gove

#indyref2

#ids

#subctour

#green

#anarchy

#novote

#thechoice

#news

#wales

#dom

esticviolence

#tvdebate #labourmanifesto

#paedom

ps

#everydaysexism

#property

#osa

#awkward

#battlefornum

ber10

#youhadonejob

#electionyorks

#austerity

#hom

esforbritain#fracking

#olsx

#voteneilhay

#occupy

#sheffield#dem

entiapromise

#libdem

#redtoriesout

#scotland2015

#new

snight

#leeds

#abcnew

s24

#csa

#manchester

#beyondtheballot

#greenparty#ddj

#uknew

s

#mentalhealth

#coalition

#greenm

anifesto#policychallenge

#llanelli

#wato

#ukelection2015

#farage

#election#projectfear2

#dataviz

#womeninpolitics

#scotnight

#bbc

#nigelfarage

#ukpolitics

#osborne

#allianceparty#elections

#r4today

#ldge2015

#gen2015

#values

#votegreen

#eu

#workingforwales

#fail

#bbcnews

#blukip

#emptychair