Using Twitter to Assess Attitudes in the US

Christina Daquino, Verrazano Honors Class of 2018, was one of CSI's first graduates in Information Systems and Informatics

My capstone experience has offered me more than I had ever anticipated. When I was first hit with the term capstone, I had no idea what I was going to do. My major had offered me such a wide range of specialties and I did not even think about what I really wanted to do. This capstone made me look into my major and see the career options. It made me really think about how I wanted to continue with my degree. Once I had a couple of ideas, the second hardest part was finding a mentor.

Christina presenting at the Undergraduate Research Conference

 My mentor showed me how working in the industry really is. She helped me develop my idea further into a research topic. After the topic was finalized she sent me on my way. It was my job to think about how I can accomplish this and what methods I need to use. It was not an easy semester I have to say, but again after college will not be easy after either.

          My idea for the capstone had changed multiple times after starting, but after two months of back and forth I had an official research topic. Using the language R, I wanted to find the sentiment of the USA. I used R to stream tweets from Twitter in real time to get an accurate measurement for a state’s sentiment. After finding these sentiments, I plotted them on a map and wanted to locate specific locations of tweets. This idea was influenced by marketing of businesses. How emotion and marketing relate to its target audience and area. Also incorporating a map of Census results to better see that target audience.

 Going further with my project, I would like to eventually get city sentiment. These sentiments can not only help businesses but even government officials to improve areas where people need it the most. I would like to plot specific tweets in an area based on highest sentiment. For example, if Staten Island has an overall negative sentiment it will show the most common negative topic everyone is talking about.

 I have learned valuable skills thought out my capstone project. This includes work related skills and life skills. This capstone gave me realistic expectations of project management and how working with others will be continuing my career. Also it gave me a better understanding of the developing ideas and the purpose for them. I hope to continue building these skills and using the new ones I just developed.