"Narco" Emotions: Affect and Desensitization in Social Media during the Mexican Drug War

Social media platforms have emerged as prominent information sharing ecosystems in the context of a variety of recent crises, ranging from mass emergencies, to wars and political conflicts. We study affective responses in social media and how they might indicate desensitization to violence experienced in communities embroiled in an armed conflict. Specifically, we examine three established affect measures: negative affect, activation, and dominance as observed on Twitter in relation to a number of statistics on protracted violence in four major cities afflicted by the Mexican Drug War. During a two year period (Aug 2010-Dec 2012), while violence was on the rise in these regions, our findings show a decline in negative emotional expression as well as a rise in emotional arousal and dominance in Twitter posts: aspects known to be psychological markers of desensitization. We discuss the implications of our work for behavioral health, facilitating rehabilitation efforts in communities enmeshed in an acute and persistent urban warfare, and the impact on civic engagement.Comment: Best paper award at the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pages 3563-357

Main contribution of iconic attractions towards increasing popularity of tourism destinations: an analysis of twitter posts and locations

The social media platforms, due to their universal and comfortable interface, have become the real enablers of a microblogging services. Moreover, with the evolution of online reviews, consumers feel comfortable to express their opinions and share their personal experiences not only about the brands, but also about the travel destinations. Henceforth, social networks such as, Twitter, became important source of information. In this study, author analyzes 4,000 Twitter posts about 2 popular and 2 less popular locations and associated derived sentiments. The study demonstrates that there is a certain difference in perception of locations with a different popularity rank. In terms of information exposure, more popular locations tend to have a higher message diffusion activity, with most of them being of neutral polarity. Additionally, results showed that negative affection is observed more for less popular locations, providing valuable insight for Destination Marketing Organizations. In addition, for both groups, role of followers’ base was ineffective, demonstrating that topic of message sentiment and diffusion are key in tourism domain. Thus, from a methodological point of view, the main contribution of this research is the usage of random and unstructured data in Twitter to the measurement of the perception of the potential visitors of tourist attractions based on the sentiment analysis of posts associated to them. From theoretical point of view, using the sentiment orientation, the study relates to the user exposure and affection of the iconic attractions by the perceived difference in their popularity in accordance with external destination ranking.As redes sociais, devido ao seu interface universal e confortável, tornaram-se reais facilitadores de serviços de microblogging. Por conseguinte, a evolução dos reviews on-line, conferiu aos consumidores maior conforto para expressar as suas opiniões e partilhar as suas experiências pessoais, não apenas sobre as marcas, mas também sobre os seus destinos de viagem. As redes sociais, como o Twitter, tornaram-se importantes fontes de informação. Neste estudo, o autor analisa os sentimentos derivados de 4.000 publicações do Twitter acerca de 2 locais turísticos mais populares e 2 menos populares. O estudo demonstra que há uma certa diferença na percepção dos locais em função do seu grau de popularidade. Em termos de exposição, os locais mais populares tendem a ter uma maior atividade de difusão nas suas mensagens, sendo a maioria delas de polaridade neutra. Adicionalmente, os resultados mostraram que o sentimento negativo é mais partilhado em locais menos populares, fornecendo informações valiosas para Organizações de Marketing. Não obstante, para ambos os grupos, a dimenção da base de seguidores foi irrelevante, demonstrando que o tema da mensagem sentimento e difusão são fundamentais no domínio do turismo. A nível metodológico, o principal contributo desta pesquisa é a análise do sentimento de dados aleatórios e desestruturados do Twitter para a medição da percepção acerca de atracções turísticas com base na. Do ponto de vista teórico, o estudo relaciona-se com a exposição do usuário e o sentimento das atrações icônicas pela diferença percebida na sua popularidade de acordo com um ranking de destinos externo