Real-time Social Media Analytics through Semantic Annotation and Linked Open Data

Abstract

This paper describes an open source framework for analysing large volume social media content, which comprises semantic annotation, Linked Open Data, semantic search, dynamic result aggregation, and information visualisation. In particular, exploratory search and sense-making are supported through information visualisation interfaces, such as co-occurrence matrices, term clouds, treemaps, and choropleths. There is also an interactive semantic search interface (Prospector), where users can save, refine, and analyse the results of semantic search queries over time. These functionalities are presented in more detail in the context of analysing tweets from UK politicians and party candidates in the run up to the 2015 UK general election.