Rights statement: Copyright 2015 American Geophysical Union.
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Mapping auroral activity with Twitter
AU - Case, Nathan
AU - MacDonald, Elizabeth
AU - Heavner, Matt
AU - Tapia, Andrea
AU - Lalone, Nicolas
N1 - Copyright 2015 American Geophysical Union.
PY - 2015/5/28
Y1 - 2015/5/28
N2 - Twitter is a popular, publicly-accessible, social media service that has proven useful in mapping large-scale events in real-time. In this study, for the first time, the use of Twitter as a measure of auroral activity is investigated. Peaks in the number of aurora-related tweets are found to frequently coincide with geomagnetic disturbances (detection rate of 91%). Additionally, the number of daily aurora-related tweets is found to strongly correlate with several auroral strength proxies (ravg ≈ 0.7). An examination is made of the bias for location and time of day within Twitter data, and a first order correction of these effects is presented. Overall, the results suggest that Twitter can provide both specific details about an individual aurora and accurate real-time indication of when, and even from where, an aurora is visible.
AB - Twitter is a popular, publicly-accessible, social media service that has proven useful in mapping large-scale events in real-time. In this study, for the first time, the use of Twitter as a measure of auroral activity is investigated. Peaks in the number of aurora-related tweets are found to frequently coincide with geomagnetic disturbances (detection rate of 91%). Additionally, the number of daily aurora-related tweets is found to strongly correlate with several auroral strength proxies (ravg ≈ 0.7). An examination is made of the bias for location and time of day within Twitter data, and a first order correction of these effects is presented. Overall, the results suggest that Twitter can provide both specific details about an individual aurora and accurate real-time indication of when, and even from where, an aurora is visible.
KW - aurora
KW - mapping
KW - Twitter
KW - citizen science
U2 - 10.1002/2015GL063709
DO - 10.1002/2015GL063709
M3 - Journal article
VL - 42
SP - 3668
EP - 3676
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
SN - 0094-8276
IS - 10
ER -