SMART Seminar Series: Tweets, Emergencies and Experience - New Theory and Methods in support of the PetaJakarta Project

Clarke, R. J. (2014) Tweets, Flooding & Experience 1

A/Prof. Rodney Clarke Director, Collaboration Laboratory (Co-Lab), SMART Infrastructure Facility, University of Wollongong, Australia

Tweets, Flooding and Experience New Theory and Methods in Support of the @petajkt Project


Agenda Tweets, Flooding and Experience

1. Introduction 2. @petajkt Domain 3. Language Theory

4. Other @petajkt project Melatih Bahaya Kaji Bahaya-Kaji


Introduction Personal Background …

Information Systems background- worked in IS, Computing Engineering, and Management (I now am Operations discipline leader, Faculty of Business)

a proportion of my time is located in SMART 6.207 in a room I called the Collaboration Laboratory (Co-Lab) although I subsequently found out that SMART was to be peppered with Collaboration Rooms- I retained this name because it described the kind of relationship I wanted to build between SMART and Faculty of Business

I hope to be an example of constructive and respectful cooperation between Faculty’s working together


Introduction Personal Background

as my training and employment suggests, I am a multidisciplinary researcher: ‘applied systems research’ (in organisations/coalitions) and ‘systems in society’ (in societies)

some of the theoretical tool kits I use a lot (and also in combination) are: communication- especially functional, semiotic approaches to human

communication modalities- language, media, (and yes also social media)- I use this to replace standard Shannon & Weaver Information theory

synthetic systems thinking- interesting approach to systems because it is designed to explain why systems behave as they do rather than simple providing parts-list/descriptions of them


Introduction Role in @petajkt

I think I was the first to suggest that we should apply for GC SEED funding for what was initially an Infrastructure Resilience/Social Media project in SMART I had and am still working on what became a Disaster Metamodelling URC

with Ghassan Beydoun- I asked our SES collegues what they thought about this Resilience and they were polite but they thought it would not be useful

first attempt at SEED funding was rejected; no body was disheartened for long

Etianne was appointed to SMART project scope changed; Tomas et al did a great job in getting CogniCity architecture together

‘resilience is liveability under duress’- my role initially was as a Senior Advisor, now I am a Principal Investigator (Challenges) mainly because of the potential of semantic approaches to social media


Introduction Research Question: What does this mean?


Introduction Role in @petajkt

this talk comprises several parts: introduction to the kind of communication theory that I use, and that

is arguably the only useful theory for answering the research question?

propose a number of hypothetical projects that use this theory of communication semantics and apply it to develop new researchable projects within the @petajkt

suggest the dveelopment of tools for the supervised assistance of tweet processing


Domain


@petajkt domain Three Elements

dealing with flooding hazards in Jakarta by employing social media to understand what is happening (if

we can- so this talk is about how this might be possible to do) the way I want to deal with this not with big data- its small

data- or perhaps what I would prefer to call rich data look at this throughout the entire emergency management

cycle

1. Mitigation 2. Preparedness 3. Response 4. Recovery


@petajkt domain Social Media: A Communication Perspective

social media is every where even on sites that do not utilise social media (Twitter, Facebook links)

how do we distinguish between different kinds of social media, what are they used for and why would you use

one solution was provided by Douglas Wray who posted an explanation for how social media sites differed according to how they described donuts

it’s communicative


Language Theory


Language Theory Approaches: Comprehensive and Functional

two major classes of comprehensive communication approaches: formal theories focus on the structure of

individual sentences- computational linguistics, parsing and compliers

functional theories that consider language as a meaning making resource and focus language use

communication approaches vary to the extent that they can provide complete discourse descriptions communication resources- describe facets of

language activity or use comprehensive theories- an extensive range

of communication resources and one or more grammars

formal

functional

Bloomfieldian

post-Bloomfieldian

ChomskyanGovernment and Binding Grammar (GB)

Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG)

Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG)

stratificational (Lamb, Gleason)

American

anthropological linguistics (Sapir, Whorf)

Tagmemic Grammar (Pike, Longacre)

‘west coast’ functionalism

European

British

Firthian

HallidayanScale and Category Grammar

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFG)

Continental

Prague School

Glossematics (Hjelmslev)

French structuralism (e.g. Greimas)

Other ….

Functional Grammar (Dik)

Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)

Categorical Grammar (GB)

Transformational Grammar (GB)


Language Theory Selected: Systemic Functional Linguistics

Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) was developed in Australia buy British socio-linguist Michael Halliday (1973; 1975; 1978; Halliday & Hasan, 1976; 1985; 1989)

functional theory of language: how people use language and how language is structured for use (Eggins, 2004; 2008)

language usually considered as a tool- but in SFL a text is a social process

text is a unit of communication (Hodge & Kress, 1988)- “any instance of language, in any medium… is a rich, many faceted phenomenon that ‘means’ in many different ways” (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004, p.1).


Language Theory Metafunction and Strata

semiotic or meaning making approach to language analysis metafunction theory tri-stratal system of language bistratal system for context

resources exist in system networks at the intersections of strata and metafunction- knowledge of them enables methods to be applied to particular tasks

for example when we start looking at the lexico-grammatical level and the interpersonal metafunction (one of three grammars) we can look at twitter texts as creating affiliation

we look at the same strata but we look at transitivity (another grammar associated with representing experience)



Analysing Tweets Grammar of Experiential Meaning (Transitivity)

circumstance

not

material

mental

pr: material; +Actor; (+Goal) (+Range) (+Beneficiary)

pr:mental; +Senser; +Phenomenon

+Circumstance

verbalpr:verbal; +Sayer; (+Reciever) (+Verbiage)

behaviouralpr:behavioural; +Behaver; (+Behaviour); (+Phenomenon)

existentialpr:existential; +Existent

relational pr:identifying; +Token; +Value identifying

attributivepr:attributive; +Carrier; +Attribute

clause


Analysing Tweets Grammar of Experiential Meaning (Circumstances)

Extent

Matter

Role

Accompaniment

circumstance

distance (spatial)

duration (temporal)

Locationplace (spatial)

time (temporal)

quality

comparison

means

Manner

Cause purpose

behalf

reason


Other @petajkt Projects 1: Melatih


petajakarta.org/melatih Video Wall

we need to train students to assist in the project (now 3 teams, more … )- introducing the Bahasa Indonesia word ‘melatih’ - train, practice, coach, drill, form, ground

those student team (plus researchers on the project) are collecting datasets of various kinds that can be used to improve training for the next teams (and also as a debrief for return teams)

cohort orientation- review of image media with the aid of a hazards researcher to sort and then publically interpret the images to the next cohort

use SMART’s video wall- a nice research use for it!


petajakarta.org/melatih BRL Mobile Observational Facility

these sessions are recorded using the Business Research Laboratory’s Mobile Observational Facility- high definition, wide angle pan-tilt-zoom IP camera and laptop running Noldus’ The Observer

observational template is developed (and iterated) to accommodate the interpretation skills for urban flooding hazard assessment- developed in part with our partners at the @BPBDJakarta

template supports double looped learning

https://twitter.com/BPBDJakarta


petajakarta.org/melatih Learning: Single (lhs) vs Double (rhs); Sturman (2000)

double looped learning to improve both the assessments made by students/experts and also the materials that support student assessments (training & field reporting)

Information FeedbackDecisions

Real World

Strategy, Structure, and Decision Rules

Mental Models of Real World

Information FeedbackDecisions

Real World

Strategy, Structure, and Decision Rules

Mental Models of Real World


petajakarta.org/melatih Double Looped-Learning: BRL MOF & Video Wall


petajakarta.org/melatih Initial Workflow

Initial UoW Team

Descriptions, Reports,

ProceduresAssessments,Classifications

SubsequentUoW Team

Research Partners1

Research Partners

directly: engagement with agencies and membersindirectly: the media and social media they produce

Teams

Experts

1 content: what is represented and how its interpreted?form: how is it packaged?, who are the audiences?

2

2

2

Facilitator(BRL- MOF, Fac.BusSMART Video Wall)

Training/Field ProceduresField Reports

directly: engagement with agencies and membersindirectly: the media and social media they produce

1 content: what is represented and how its interpreted?form: how is it packaged?, who are the audiences?

2

ac tato( O , ac usS deo a )


Other @petajkt Projects 2: Bahaya


petajakarta.org/bahaya Rapid Ethnography through Communication Design

melatih is based on improving the appropriateness of groups of genres that are associated with written language reporting- specifically urban hazard assessment- and applied to training students field cohorts

but, we can apply the same ideas to spoken language interactions with those affected by the flooding- we use the Bahasa Indonesia word ‘bahaya’ - danger, hazard, peril, risk, jeopardy, menace

spoken language interactions: between victims/citizens and rescue/services teams (‘combat

agencies’) within members of the rescue/services teams


petajakarta.org/bahaya Employs Canonical Genre Theory/Rapid Ethnography

used in this field context, genre theory can be applied to design interactions which are as short as possible but yield the largest amount of assessment information from the victims

we will use genre theory genre can be though of as a culturally recognised pattern consisting of

the stages that are evident in texts; analogous to patterns in software engineering; canonical genres are ones which pop up in many situations

to design what’s referred to as rapid ethnography- the first time this has been done

we will develop techniques (probes) that can be used to elicit appropriate information to complete the relevant genres


Other @petajkt Projects 3: Kaji


petajakarta.org/kaji Hazard Knowledge from Citizens …

traditional urban hazard classifications are not developed from the citizens point of view- they are developed out of academic knowledge of hazards or out of government requirements for economic assessments of risk-

one approach we could use is to use the tweet corpus to identify and develop inductive urban hazard taxonomies (folksonomies); the perspective from those who are most immediately and involuntarily effected

we use the Bahasa Indonesia word ‘Kaji’ or knowledge for this particular project- two methods are needed …


petajakarta.org/kaji Hazard Knowledge from Citizens …

in order to signal knowledge we are not after ‘keywords’ we are after a grammatical structure at the group/phrase level called a nominal group a group of words where the main word is a noun the part of a clause that contains nouns and words that accompany nouns

we can do a lot with nominal groups in English Count: the three spiders Classify: Redback spider Specify: the smallest of the three spiders Describe: shiny Redback spider Qualify: … spinning their webs in the corner


petajakarta.org/kaji Hazard Knowledge from Citizens

to represent this knowledge we use a notation from SFL called a system network (see next slide) the same notation is being used in another Global Challenges SEED project

‘Sharing Retirees Knowledge’ a Python library is currently being built (Angela Piper) discussing the design of a responsive web application that will interface

we can apply this to tweet corpora for petajakarta, which we designate as kaji or we can apply this as part of the bahaya- during the rapid ethnographic interview - in which case we can designate this bahaya-kaji



Conclusions & Further Research



SFL based communication theory can be gainfully exploited of the ever growing tweet corpus being harvested through CogniCity and supported through the #Data Grant

the traditional approach of viewing Twitter from the perspective of social media (though novel from the perspective of SFL) is nonetheless not very useful in the hazards/emergency domain

this requires us to reconsider the experiential metafunction of language- doing so provides us with the possibility of using the grammar of Transitivity as a whole new area from which we can develop tools



when we identify grammatical patterns associated with transitivity in any texts including those of social media like Twitter we expand our options in terms of search and analysis provides 7 process types (material, mental, verbal, behavioural,

existential, relational: identifying, relational: attributive) along with 10 circumstances that can be used to qualify or constrain

the every process type: extent (duration- temporal, distance - spatial), cause, location (time- temporal), place spatial), matter, manner (means, quality, comparison), role, accompaniment (reason, purpose, behalf)



in SFL for any of the major grammars its not just one constituent that accounts for differences in meaning (say process) but entire configurations of functions

these grammatical structures are necessary for this analysis- tools that support this kind of processing, need to identify the kind of way in which particular words are used

irrespective of the SFL analysis undertaken, any software tools will be supervised- the work is done in identifying the grammatical structures at hand

traditional approaches are sufficient for these purpose- regular expressions, WORDNET, Python and its associated libraries



we need these grammatical tools built- with them we will be able to understand what has been going on during these floods- we will be able to answer what a Tweet meant- there just simply isn’t any other way to do it

along with other relevant approaches we can extend @petajkt project into all other aspects of hazards and emergency- we identified three + combined one Melatih- train, practice, coach, drill, form, ground Bahaya- danger, hazard peril, risk, jeopardy, menace Kaji- Knowledge (based on Tweet corpora, plus used in the field

Bahaya-Kaji)



we are not limited to the use of text only social media platforms- the SFL theory has been extended to include a large range of non-text media


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Collaboration Laboratory (Co-Lab)

SMART Infrastructure Facility, Building 6 Room 207 University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia + 61 2 4221 3752; +61 2 4221 3218

Web: http://smart.uow.edu.au/uow-collaborators/co-lab.html

Director, A/Prof Rodney J. Clarke

School of Management and Marketing University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia T + 61 2 4221 5818; F +61 2 4221 4154 Web 1: http://www.uow.edu.au/commerce/smm/mgmt/mgmtstaff/UOW010750.html

Faculty of Economic Sciences, Communication and IT Karlstad University, SE-651 88 Karlstad, Sweden T +46 54 700 18 40 Web 2: https://www.kau.se/forskning/forskdb?to_do=show_researcher&id=3236

Linkedin: http://au.linkedin.com/in/rodneyjclarke Twitter: clarke_rj Skype: rodney-j-clarke

WordPress: blogs.uow.edu.au/colab Vimeo: co-labAU

http://uowblogs.com/co-lab/

Education

SMART Seminar Series: Tweets, Emergencies and Experience - New Theory and Methods in support of the PetaJakarta Project