A Review on the Trends in Event Detection by Analyzing Social Media Platforms' Data

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jun 15;22(12):4531. doi: 10.3390/s22124531.

Abstract

Social media platforms have many users who share their thoughts and use these platforms to organize various events collectively. However, different upsetting incidents have occurred in recent years by taking advantage of social media, raising significant concerns. Therefore, considerable research has been carried out to detect any disturbing event and take appropriate measures. This review paper presents a thorough survey to acquire in-depth knowledge about the current research in this field and provide a guideline for future research. We systematically review 67 articles on event detection by sensing social media data from the last decade. We summarize their event detection techniques, tools, technologies, datasets, performance metrics, etc. The reviewed papers mainly address the detection of events, such as natural disasters, traffic, sports, real-time events, and some others. As these detected events can quickly provide an overview of the overall condition of the society, they can significantly help in scrutinizing events disrupting social security. We found that compatibility with different languages, spelling, and dialects is one of the vital challenges the event detection algorithms face. On the other hand, the event detection algorithms need to be robust to process different media, such as texts, images, videos, and locations. We outline that the event detection techniques compatible with heterogeneous data, language, and the platform are still missing. Moreover, the event and its location with a 24 × 7 real-time detection system will bolster the overall event detection performance.

Keywords: deep machine learning; event detection; review; shallow machine learning; social media; social sensing.

Publication types

  • Review
  • Systematic Review

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Humans
  • Natural Disasters*
  • Social Media*