A Multi-Indicator Approach for Geolocalization of Tweets

Authors

  • Axel Schulz Technische Universität Darmstadt and SAP Research
  • Aristotelis Hadjakos Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
  • Heiko Paulheim University of Mannheim
  • Johannes Nachtwey SAP Research
  • Max Mühlhäuser Technische Universität Darmstadt

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v7i1.14396

Keywords:

Microblog, geolocation estimation, toponym resolution, twitter, location-awareness, geolocalization

Abstract

Real-time information from microblogs like Twitter is useful for different applications such as market research, opinion mining, and crisis management. For many of those messages, location information is required to derive useful insights. Today, however, only around 1% of all tweets are explicitly geotagged. We propose the first multi-indicator method for determining (1) the location where a tweet was created as well as (2) the location of the user's residence. Our method is based on various weighted indicators, including the names of places that appear in the text message, dedicated location entries, and additional information from the user profile. An evaluation shows that our method is capable of locating 92% of all tweets with a median accuracy of below 30km, as well as predicting the user's residence with a median accuracy of below 5.1km. With that level of accuracy, our approach significantly outperforms existing work.

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Published

2021-08-03

How to Cite

Schulz, A., Hadjakos, A., Paulheim, H., Nachtwey, J., & Mühlhäuser, M. (2021). A Multi-Indicator Approach for Geolocalization of Tweets. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 7(1), 573-582. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v7i1.14396