Analysis of environmental problems based on social media data (on the example of atmospheric air quality)

Siberian State University of Telecommunications and Information science, Kirov street 86, Novosibirsk 630102, Russia

^* Corresponding author: evgvik1978@mail.ru

Abstract

The article discusses the state and the prospects of two new methods to study the environmental issues: Internet ecology (iEcology) and conservation culturomics. Both approaches are very similar; both of them are based on the big data analysis, which is not directly meant to study and solve environmental issues (publications in social networks, Internet search, photos and videos posted on Internet platforms, etc.). The authors offer the methodology to study environmental issues (as exemplified by the quality of the atmospheric air) based on the data from the VK social network and machine learning algorithms. For the content analysis we used PolyAnalyst software. The results of the analysis of publications on the atmospheric air quality in the Magnitogorsk city for 2020-2022 are presented. We identified 433 messages characterizing the air condition in Magnitogorsk. Our research demonstrates that the ecological methods of conservation culturomics can contribute to the analysis of the environmental situation. Our results let us state that the issue of the atmospheric air quality is very important for the residents of Magnitogorsk. The social network data can be used as an additional source of information for the subjective assessment of the atmospheric air quality.words.