What are the actual public feelings in a particular city, what attracts attention and what discourages followers, what information raises and what information lowers the level of hate? Students of our Faculty can answer such questions based on the analysis of posts on Twitter or Instagram.

Are you an influencer? You should probably want to know if it's better to take a selfie with a book or with a sofa in the background to gain more likes from your followers. Do you administrate a city? You need to have accurate information about whether your city's residents are more impatient about the condition of the roads or of the health care, and which of these areas you should address first.

This type of reliable data is usually obtained by large research agencies employing dozens of people. However, now it can be also obtained by students of Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

– Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. are a powerful source of data for social scientists. They can provide valuable information about the opinions, behaviours and preferences of users, which allows a better understanding of their attitudes and actions – says Prof. Tomasz Kajdanowicz, head of the Department of Artificial Intelligence. – One of the main reasons why social media can be a good source of data for researchers is that many people share information about themselves, their interests and activities there. This information can be used to analyse and detect trends that affect different social groups.

A man or a sofa vs a book and a cup

As part of the course on Digital Media Analysis, students of Prof. Kajdanowicz checked, among other things, what city residents complain about and found out that roads and public transport are rated the worst. Only entertainment is rated positively. Interestingly, Wrocław is still perceived as the best from among the surveyed cities: Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań and Gdańsk.

The students also measured the emotions evoked by the activity of political parties on the Internet. They determined that the Civic Coalition and Poland 2050 spark the greatest curiosity, the Confederation party – admiration, PSL – amusement, and the Left-wing party and PiS – anger.

– Students also developed a method for detecting surreptitious advertising in social posts, and the research showed that influencers hide advertisements in their materials, because they do not lose their reach – says Prof. Kajdanowicz. – We also found that a person, a bed, a sofa or flowers in the photo increase the popularity of posts, while bottles or cups decrease it.

Other authors have proposed e.g. a model for forecasting the number of likes for a post and confirmed that the old truth 'it doesn't matter what they write about you, it's important that they write at all' still holds, at least when attempting to assess the popularity of computer games.

Magdalena Kociołek, together with Weronika Jakubowska and Dominik Kurowski, looked at posts about conspiracy theories.

– Our research has shown that a lot of people believe in conspiracy theories and propagate them, but there are also many opponents of these theories and people are not so easily taken in – says Magdalena Kociołek, a third-year student of artificial intelligence.

Michał Ilski, Jan Pawłowski and Jakub Balicki, on the other hand, took a closer look at the gaming environment.

– We found that the communities of players of different game genres do not differ so much from each other and that this community is not as toxic as the media suggests – says Michał Ilski.

A poster matters – announcement of the results of the Best poster award 2023

Research is not everything. As part of the classes, students also prepared posters (scientific posters), which they used to present the purpose of their research, the methods used and the results obtained. All the works took part in the "Best poster award" competition for the best poster presenting the effect of social media analysis. The competition was won by Maksymilian Mazurkiewicz and Michał Skubek for a poster entitled Is this post sponsored? [poster]

Here are the works submitted for the competition:

It doesn't matter what they write about you, it's important that they write at all!
Oliwier Kaszyca, Igor Cichecki, Dominika Szydło, Mateusz Kochanek                                                                                            [poster]
The authors examined whether the feelings prevailing in social media indicate who will win The Game Awards? Does the opinion of the players affect the ratings of the game publisher? You can find the answer on the poster.

What is the graph tweeting about?
Joanna Waczyńska, Patryk Rygiel
[poster]
The statistics of our posts are influenced by many more factors than just the content. What else makes posts more read or liked? You can find the answer on the poster.

Truth or conspiracy? Can you recognize conspiracy theories on Twitter?
Weronika Jakubowska, Magdalena Kociołek, Dominik Kurowski
[poster]
Which conspiracy theory has the most likes? Which conspiracy theory got the most replies to a tweet? You can find the answer on the poster.

Recipe for #popularity
Wojciech Kozłowski, Sylwia Zemsta
[poster]
Can we predict the popularity of an Instagram post based solely on its features? What does the data say about it? You can find the answer on the poster.

Visual insights on popularity
Anna Klimiuk, Michał Szachniewicz
[poster]

Is this post sponsored?
Maksymilian Mazurkiewicz, Michał Skubek
[poster]
What is the popularity of posts marked and not marked as sponsored? How accurately can analytics models catch untagged sponsored posts? You can find the answer on the poster.

Has Twitter dropped the #Shackles?
Tomasz Gniazdowski, Robert Hejda, Kacper Wołowiec
[poster]
How did the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk affect the quality of content presented on this portal? Has the level of hate in Twitter discussions increased or decreased? You can find the answer on the poster.

Emotions and politics
Aleksander Szczęsny, Nadezhda Dazhunts, Maciej Markiewicz, Dawid Motyka
[poster]
The authors of the poster analysed over 5 million texts related to political parties. They selected 7 emotions and checked to what an extent the tested political parties evoke these emotions. Which party makes you laugh the most? You can find the answer on the poster.

Games reveal you
Michał Ilski, Jan Pawłowski, Jakub Balicki
[poster]
Which type of game has the most toxic fans? Do fans of a particular type of game share similar views? You can find the answer on the poster.

What do city residents complain about?
Tomasz Dróżdż, Marcin Przymus, Tomasz Pach
[poster]
The authors analysed over 3 million posts about Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, Gdańsk and Poznań. They studied how residents evaluated the condition of, among others, health, roads, transport, education, environment, offices, entertainment. They positively evaluated only one aspect of life. Which one? You can find the answer on the poster.