TY - GEN
T1 - Towards Real-time Remote Social Sensing via Targeted Advertising
AU - Fatehkia, Masoomali
AU - Imran, Muhammad
AU - Weber, Ingmar
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Social media serves as an important communication channel for people affected by crises, creating a data source for emergency responders wanting to improve situational awareness. In particular, social listening on Twitter has been widely used for real-time analysis of crisis-related messages. This approach, however, is often hindered by the small fraction of (hyper-)localized content and by the inability to explicitly ask affected populations about aspects with the most operational value. Here, we explore a new form of social media data collected through targeted poll ads on Facebook. Using geo-targeted ads during flood events in six countries, we show that it is possible to collect thousands of poll responses within hours of launching the ad campaign, and at a cost of a few (US dollar) cents per response. We believe that this flexible, fast, and affordable data collection can serve as a valuable complement to existing approaches.
AB - Social media serves as an important communication channel for people affected by crises, creating a data source for emergency responders wanting to improve situational awareness. In particular, social listening on Twitter has been widely used for real-time analysis of crisis-related messages. This approach, however, is often hindered by the small fraction of (hyper-)localized content and by the inability to explicitly ask affected populations about aspects with the most operational value. Here, we explore a new form of social media data collected through targeted poll ads on Facebook. Using geo-targeted ads during flood events in six countries, we show that it is possible to collect thousands of poll responses within hours of launching the ad campaign, and at a cost of a few (US dollar) cents per response. We believe that this flexible, fast, and affordable data collection can serve as a valuable complement to existing approaches.
KW - Facebook advertising
KW - flood mapping
KW - real-time polling
KW - remote social sensing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85171793115&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85171793115
T3 - Proceedings of the International ISCRAM Conference
SP - 396
EP - 406
BT - Proceedings - 20th Global Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Conference, ISCRAM 2023
PB - Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM
T2 - 20th Global Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Conference, ISCRAM 2023
Y2 - 28 May 2023 through 31 May 2023
ER -