A collaborative project between academics at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) and The University of Nottingham UK is mining ‘big data’ to aid our understanding of social issues.

The ‘Mining the Meaning’ project will look at big data sets in order to better understand two areas - the perception of alcohol consumption in society, and vets’ decision-making processes when treating animals. 

Big data is the term given to the data produced by digital processes and social media exchanges. This data is so large and complex that it is becoming difficult to process using standard computers and traditional database techniques, so researchers are investigating new ways to extract meaningful information using scalable super computers.

The project will be coordinated by a team composed of individuals from both Nottingham Campuses - from the Schools of English, Computer Science, Mathematical Sciences, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine and Science, as well as Libraries and Information Services.

Dr Eugene Ch’ng is from the School of Computer Science at UNNC and is part of the Big Data and Visual Analytics Lab.

He will lead on the automated collection of data from social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. Computer algorithms will acquire, restructure and classify the profiles of social media users and their posted content in order create datasets, which will be compared against literary and newspaper data over time to identify concepts and frequent topics.

Eugene said: “Big data is a social phenomenon. It is produced by and affects society - every social media exchange or digital activity you take part in creates data that can tell us a lot about the world we live in.

“The challenge for researchers is how to find patterns and, as a consequence, value in the multiplicity of data sources. This project uses two case studies to explore methods of big data analysis and in turn assesses how social problems require the refinement and development of methods. The data collected may also be used to influence policy makers in the specific areas included in the cases studies.  ”

The project has been funded through a Nottingham pump priming grant of 10,000 GBP.

For more information on the project contact Dr Eugene Ch’ng.

More press information about UNNC is available from Tess Humphrys, communications and marketing officer, UNNC, on +86 574 8818 0940.

Posted on 23 November 2014