Alexander von Lünen

Real-Time Detection, Tracking, and Monitoring of Automatically Discovered Events in Social Media

We introduce ReDites, a system for realtime event detection, tracking, monitoring and visualisation. It is designed to assist Information Analysts in understanding and exploring complex events as they unfold in the world. Events are automatically detected from the Twitter stream. Then those that are categorised as being security-relevant are tracked, geolocated, summarised and visualised for the end-user. Furthermore, the system tracks changes in emotions over events, signalling possible flashpoints or abatement. We demonstrate the capabilities of ReDites using an extended use case from the September 2013 Westgate shooting incident. Through an evaluation of system latencies, we also show that enriched events are made available for users to explore within seconds of that event occurring.

The Digital Arts and Humanities

The case studies in this book illuminate how arts and humanities tropes can aid in contextualizing Digital Arts and Humanities, Neogeographic and Social Media activity and data through the creation interpretive schemas to study interactions between visualizations, language, human behaviour, time and place.

Beuys Don’t Cry: From Social Sculptures to Social Media

This paper looks at the art and philosophy of German fluxus artist Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) and relates this to current debates in the Digital Arts and Humanities. Beuys coined a number of grassroots concepts, such as the “social sculpture.” With this he referred to (a) the potential of art to transform society, (b) art as a social product, i.e., sculptures in which the onlookers are part of the artwork, and (c) the potential of every person to be an artist. His often misconstrued punchline of “everyone is an artist” is an extension of Marcel Duchamps’ “Ready Made” art, in which anything can be art; i.e., what Beuys proposed was rather that “anyone can be an artist.” This chapter looks at the similarities between Beuys’ work and Social Media and Digital Humanities, in how far his concept of the ‘Social Sculpture’ can inform the two.