Geo-Tagged Social Media Data-Based Analytical Approach for Perceiving Impacts of Social Events

Studying the impact of social events is important for the sustainable development of society. Given the growing popularity of social media applications, social sensing networks with users acting as smart social sensors provide a unique channel for understanding social events. Current research on social events through geo-tagged social media is mainly focused on the extraction of information about when, where, and what happened, i.e., event detection. There is a trend towards the machine learning of more complex events from even larger input data. This research work will undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of big geo-data. In this study, however, we start from known or detected events, raising further questions on how they happened, how they affect people's lives, and for how long. By combining machine learning, natural language processing, and visualization methods in a generic analytical framework, we attempt to interpret the impact of known social events from the dimensions of time, space, and semantics based on geo-tagged social media data. The whole analysis process consists of four parts: (1) preprocessing; (2) extraction of event-related information; (3) analysis of event impact; and (4) visualization. We conducted a case study on the "2014 Shanghai Stampede" event on the basis of Chinese Sina Weibo data. The results are visualized in various ways, thus ensuring the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed framework. Both the methods and the case study can serve as decision references for situational awareness and city management.