A framework for intelligent Twitter data analysis with non-negative matrix factorization

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for intelligent analysis of Twitter data. The purpose of the framework is to allow users to explore a collection of tweets by extracting topics with semantic relevance. In this way, it is possible to detect groups of tweets related to new technologies, events and other topics that are automatically discovered. Design/methodology/approach The framework is based on a three-stage process. The first stage is devoted to dataset creation by transforming a collection of tweets in a dataset according to the vector space model. The second stage, which is the core of the framework, is centered on the use of non-negative matrix factorizations (NMF) for extracting human-interpretable topics from tweets that are eventually clustered. The number of topics can be user-defined or can be discovered automatically by applying subtractive clustering as a preliminary step before factorization. Cluster analysis and word-cloud visualization are used in the last stage to enable intelligent data analysis. Findings The authors applied the framework to a case study of three collections of Italian tweets both with manual and automatic selection of the number of topics. Given the high sparsity of Twitter data, the authors also investigated the influence of different initializations mechanisms for NMF on the factorization results. Numerical comparisons confirm that NMF could be used for clustering as it is comparable to classical clustering techniques such as spherical k-means. Visual inspection of the word-clouds allowed a qualitative assessment of the results that confirmed the expected outcomes. Originality/value The proposed framework enables a collaborative approach between users and computers for an intelligent analysis of Twitter data. Users are faced with interpretable descriptions of tweet clusters, which can be interactively refined with few adjustable parameters. The resulting clusters can be used for intelligent selection of tweets, as well as for further analytics concerning the impact of products, events, etc. in the social network.