And don’t worry this isn’t going to be a rant about expenses.
At Moseley Barcamp I gave a presentation about ‘conversational psychogeography‘ and the potential for an explosion in data analysis of emotions and place. It was a very broad overview and I continually admitted that real research needed to be done (I’d love to do it, but might have to find someone to fund it). As part of the talk I mentioned by emotional analysis of Birmingham social media – which outputs at @birminghamuk on Twitter.
During the questions afterwards Tom Watson suggested that my Birmingham UK emotion scraping could be applied to groups of people – Twittering MPs in particular. Technically it certainly can, and so I did. It’s at jonbounds.co.uk/arempshappy and tweets a score each day via @arempshappy on Twitter. It uses exactly the same code as the Birmingham UK system, except that it takes its data from an aggregated feed of the tweets of all MPs produced by Tweetminster.
Using groups of people immediately makes the analysis of the data easier (or at least offers precedent) – there’s already a website offering (limited, automated) analysis of people’s tweets. It’s called tweetpsych and uses established linguistic techniques (eg LIWC) to produce scores for different aspects of personality based on person’s tweets. to extend this to groups of people should be easy.
Although restricting analysis to groups of people opens up possibilities, the groups need to be be large enough to make the sample useful and also static enough to keep the statistics baring comparison. In some respects the group of tweeting MPs is ideal – and interesting enough to be worth analysing.
How useful it is is another matter, it was easy enough to set up – and could be improved upon by someone interested in groups – so let’s watch it and see if it spikes anywhere interestingly.
it’s not psychogeography, but it’s interesting.
Tom Watson suggested that my Birmigham UK emotion scraping coud be applied to groups of people – Twittering MPs in particular. Techically it certainly can, and so i did. It’s at jonbounds.co.uk/arempshappy and tweets a score each day via @arempshappy on Twitter. It uses exactly the same code as the Birmigham UK system, except that it takes its data from an aggregated feed of the tweets of all MPs produced by Tweetminster.
Using groups of people imediately makes the analysis of the data easier (or at least offers precident) – there’s already a website offering (limited, automated) analysis of people’s tweets. It’s called tweetpsyche (check) and uses established linguistic techniques (link to software) to produce scores for different aspects of personality based on person’s tweets. to extend this to groups of people should be easy.
Although resticting anaylisis to groups of people opens up possibilites, the groups need to be be large enough to make the sample useful and also static enough to keep the statistics baring comparison. In some respects the group of tweeting MPs is ideal – and interesting enough to be worth anallising.
How useful it is is another matter, it was easy enough to set up – and could be improved upon by someone interested in groups – so let’s watch it and see if it spikes anywhere interestingly.
Blog RSS
twitter
flickr
Facebook
You Tube
tumblr
Blog for The Birmingham Post
Guido Fawkes and his blog comment policy
Although his political blog is often a place for sniping and argumentative comments (following perhaps in the style of the posts), this is a very clear piece of work. It sets out in a friendly (as friendly as the blog gets), conversational, tone just what is and isn't allowed in the comments on order-order.com.
While every point isn't transferable to all blogs, I for example love a long an detailed response to any post on sites I run, it's useful to read it and to think about how comments add value to a site — or even possibly detract. If it's a personal blog, it's very much "your gaff, your rules" and if you set them out no-one can argue. [link]