How Has Twitter Changed the Event Discussion Scenario? A Spatio-temporal Diffusion Analysis

Earlier during the times of traditional print media, there used to be one-way information dissemination which was restricted to geographical boundaries having limited span and reach. With the advent of online social media, the process of information diffusion has changed significant ally. It has become the fastest means of communication gaining wide popularity. Online Social Networks like Facebook, Twitter have revolutionized the interpersonal communication by providing a platform to individuals to express themselves at a global level, beyond their immediate geography. Most research in this area has focused on analyzing general information diffusion phenomenon. Our aim is to study diffusion dynamics of specific real world events, discussed on Twitter, with respect to location and time. We categorize the events into broad categories based on the following features - temporal (short or long), geo-spatial distribution (local or global), information diffusion mechanism (viral or gradual), influence(popular or unpopular) and cause (natural or planned). Temporal analysis shows that pre-event, during-event and post event frequency distribution of tweets differ with respect to nature of events. For example, a planned event like "Delhi Elections" is more discussed after its actual occurrence whereas other planned event like "Obama\´s visit to India" is mainly discussed during the visit only. Through geospatial analysis, we find that some events which are supposed to be constrained locally, cross regional boundaries and become a matter of global discussion. We also study the diffusion of the events using the user interaction graph formed by retweet/mention links. We conclude with the three-dimensional analysis of spatio-temporal diffusion dynamics of real-world events by exploring relationships among them.