Who doesn’t like social media?

This guy probably?

Should we study human behaviour using social media?

Yesss! But let me put on my eyeglasses!

Regional economic collapse or a single incident?

Epidemic or just a case of flu?

Start of a riot or just an unhappy person?

David: How about predicting epidemics?Sarah: Only if we knew the location of Twitter users!

David: How about predicting the location of Twitter users?Sarah: Yes, Let’s do that. Let’s exploit language!

bludger means someone really lazy.

Language is geographically biased. If a Twitter user uses“bludger”, she is probably from Sydney.

Sonny: What else can we do with language?Skippy: We can measure distant classroom engagement!

Student’s language

classroom’s average language

converging diverging

something bad happened here

People’s language becomes biased toward their communitiesgradually.