Abstract

In this article we explore the behavior of Twitter users under an emergency situation. In particular, we analyze the activity related to the 2010 earthquake in Chile and characterize Twitter in the hours and days following this disaster. Furthermore, we perform a preliminary study of certain social phenomenons, such as the dissemination of false rumors and confirmed news. We analyze how this information propagated through the Twitter network, with the purpose of assessing the reliability of Twitter as an information source under extreme circumstances. Our analysis shows that the propagation of tweets that correspond to rumors differs from tweets that spread news because rumors tend to be questioned more than news by the Twitter community. This result shows that it is posible to detect rumors by using aggregate analysis on tweets.

Keywords

Reliability (semiconductor)Social mediaComputer scienceAggregate (composite)MicrobloggingInternet privacyData scienceWorld Wide Web

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Publication Info

Year
2010
Type
article
Pages
71-79
Citations
942
Access
Closed

External Links

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Cite This

Marcelo Mendoza, Bárbara Poblete, Carlos Castillo (2010). Twitter under crisis. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Social Media Analytics , 71-79. https://doi.org/10.1145/1964858.1964869

Identifiers

DOI
10.1145/1964858.1964869

Data Quality

Data completeness: 77%