SUPPORTING FOREST AND PEAT FIRE MANAGEMENT USING SOCIAL MEDIA
A feasibility study was conducted by Pulse Lab Jakarta on the use of real-time information from social media during forest and peat fires haze events to support emergency response management in Indonesia. Specifically, the study sought to explore early signals from Twitter relating to major forest fires or haze events with a view to understanding the relation between communications trends and on- the-ground events. The results of the study demonstrated that Indonesians tweet significantly more about haze during and immediately after major fire events. During the February to March 2014 haze crisis in Riau, people tended to tweet mostly about the status of fires and support from the government. It is recommended that further research be conducted to find additional ways to extract useful information from social media, combine social media signals with other sources of digital data for real-time insights on disaster impact and human wellbeing, and integrate real-time social media data with current operational information flows used during disaster response to support more timely and effective emergency response and recovery efforts.
UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF IMMUNISATION USING SOCIAL MEDIA
This project examined how analysis of social media data could be used to understand public perceptions on immunisation. In collaboration with the Ministry of Development Planning (Bappenas), the Ministry of Health, UNICEF and World Health Organisation (WHO) in Indonesia, Pulse Lab Jakarta filtered tweets for relevant conversations about vaccines and immunisation. Findings included identification of perception trends including concerns around religious issues, disease outbreaks, side effects and the launch of a new vaccine. The results built on Global Pulse’s previous explorations in this field, confirming that real-time information derived from social media conversations could complement existing knowledge of public opinion and lead to faster and more effective response to misinformation, since rumours often spread through social networks.
NOWCASTING FOOD PRICES IN INDONESIA USING SOCIAL MEDIA SIGNALS
In this study, Pulse Lab Jakarta explored how Twitter data can be used to nowcast food prices in Indonesia. A statistical model was developed to produce daily price indicators for four different food commodities: beef, chicken, onion and chili. When the modeled prices were compared with official food prices, the figures were closely correlated, demonstrating that near real-time social media signals can function as proxy for daily food price statistics. This preliminary study paves the way for further research on how social media analytics can complement traditional price data collection by offering a faster, more affordable and efficient way of collecting real-time food prices.
