Subproject #1

Monitoring and Analysing Social Networks Topics in the Mena Region (MARSAD)

MARSAD will be a live social media observatory to visualize and analyze live social media data in the MENA region. The tool will allow the users (individuals and institutions) to get a snapshot of the current and historical trending topics and the sentiments and emotions related to the chosen topics. MARSAD will support and recognize the various Arabic dialects, and it will provide the possibility to archive the topics to allow researchers easy access to historical public datasets. The insights and the topics generated by MARSAD would allow us to do related qualitative analysis, focus groups, and online ethnographies to help the community better understand the current online discourse in the region and beyond. We will also look at Qatar’s cyberspace’s gendered and generational dynamics and give special attention to marginalized groups.

Objectives

To create a large and balanced annotated dataset from social media streams covering multiple Arabic dialects and regions.
To create MARSAD’s AI and real-time Social Media Monitoring Platform.
To define the application and integration scenarios of the MARSAD Platform. We will design for the local institutions and end-users to help them benefit from the MARSAD platform.
To scope, examine, and analyse gendered and generational dynamics in the digital public sphere in Qatar, paying particular attention to the experiences and actions of marginalized groups online.