Twitter can be a rich source of information when one wants to monitor trends related to a given topic. We looked at how tweets can augment a public health program that studies emerging patterns of illicit drug use. We describe the architecture necessary to collect vast numbers of tweets over time based on a large number of search terms and the challenges that come with finding relevant information in the collected tweets. We then show several examples of early analysis we have done on this data, examining temporal and geospatial trends.
Thyroid Physiology_Dr.E. Muralinath_ Associate Professor
This is your Twitter on drugs. Any Questions?
1. Workshop on Modeling
Social Media
Florence, Italy, 19 May 2015
1
This Is Your Twitter on Drugs.
Any Questions?
Cody Buntain and Jennifer Golbeck
{cbuntain,golbeck}@cs.umd.edu
Human-Computer Interaction Lab
University of Maryland
7. Drug use
patterns are
changing in
the United
States
Source: National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of National Findings, 2012
Past Month and Past Year Heroin Use Among
Persons Aged 12 or Older: 2002-2012
The New Face of Heroin
The explosion of drugs like OxyContin has given
way to a heroin epidemic ravaging the least
likely corners of America - like bucolic Vermont,
which has just woken up to a full-blown crisis
7
17. Researchers
have used
Twitter to track
a variety of
phenomena
17
Earthquake Epicenter Estimation
Typhoon Track Estimation
T. Sakaki, M. Okazaki, and Y. Matsuo, “Earthquake shakes Twitter users: real-
time event detection by social sensors,” in Proceedings of the 19th
international conference on World wide web, 2010, pp. 851–860.
18. Researchers
have used
Twitter to track
a variety of
phenomena
18
D. Hauger and M. Schedl, “Exploring geospatial music listening patterns in
microblog data,” Proc. 10th Int. Work. Adapt. Multimed. Retr. (AMR 2012), 2012.
Artist Popularity by Region
Artist’s Song Popularity Over Time
19. Researchers
have used
Twitter to track
a variety of
phenomena
19
V. Lampos, T. De Bie, and N. Cristianini, “Flu detector - Tracking epidemics on Twitter,” in
Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, J. Balcázar, F. Bonchi, A.
Gionis, and M. Sebag, Eds. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2010, pp. 599–602.
V. Lampos and N. Cristianini, “Tracking the flu pandemic by monitoring the social web,”
2010 2nd Int. Work. Cogn. Inf. Process. CIP2010, pp. 411–416, 2010.
Twitter-based Flu Scores versus UK’s HPA Data
20. 20
*M. J. Paul, M. Dredze, J. P. Michael, and D. Mark, “You are what you Tweet: Analyzing
Twitter for public health,” Icwsm, pp. 265–272, 2011.
You Are What You Tweet:
Analyzing Twitter for Public Health*
Rates of Allergy Sufferers in 2010
21. 21
*M. J. Paul, M. Dredze, J. P. Michael, and D. Mark, “You are what you Tweet: Analyzing
Twitter for public health,” Icwsm, pp. 265–272, 2011.
You Are What You Tweet:
Analyzing Twitter for Public Health*
Rates of Allergy Sufferers in 2010
Drug use should also affect
public health
24. Research Questions
• RQ 2 - Can Twitter illustrate state-level
geographic trends in drug use?
• RQ 1 - Can Twitter provide insight in temporal
trends in drug use?
22
60. Heroin
50
Geographic Trends
Sample +
Filter
Stream
Min Max
The New Face of Heroin
The explosion of drugs like OxyContin has given
way to a heroin epidemic ravaging the least
likely corners of America - like bucolic Vermont,
which has just woken up to a full-blown crisis
88. Ground Truth
• Limited concurrent ground
truth for comparison
• Tweets about news stories
may introduce bias
89. Ground Truth
• Limited concurrent ground
truth for comparison
• Tweets about news stories
may introduce bias
• New NSDUH should be
released in the fall
90. Ground Truth
• Limited concurrent ground
truth for comparison
• Tweets about news stories
may introduce bias
• New NSDUH should be
released in the fall
• Comparison with Google
search trends
