Pint of Science – Welcome to the light side of Big Data

Under the macroscope

David Chavalarias (research director, CNRS / EHESS) @chavalarias

You know what microscopes and telescopes are, but have you ever heard of Social Macroscopes? These unprecedented tools are developped by researchers working at the intersection between social sciences and innovation. Using billions of data points put under these social macroscopes, they observe social networks and study how social media users are interacting about major civic themes such as climate change, risk assesment, fake news… Come discover these tools that will soon be as important to citizens and researchers as the telescope was to astronomers!

Fake news & real climate

Maziyar Panahi (Big Data engineer, CNRS) , @MaziyarPanahi

Noé Gaumont (PhD student, CNRS/ EHESS) @ksadorf

Politoscope: just as political parties use big data from social networks to analyze citizens’ opinions, the Politoscope provides citizens with tools to analyze how politicians and their communities spread (mis)information on Twitter.

Climatoscope: when we talk about climate change, we think temperatures, storms, and droughts. Researchers on the other hand talk about observations, circulation models, temperature anomalies… But do scientists’ concerns converge with those of the general public? The Climatoscope allows you to compare how the web and researchers are talking about climate change.