Discovering a New Way to Measure Poverty
Researchers have long faced challenges in measuring poverty and understanding local development needs in areas where conventional data collection is difficult or impossible.
To overcome this obstacle, Rutgers researchers have used georeferenced content from Twitter as a poverty measurement tool for the first time, offering a new way to understand development from the ground up.
"This approach could transform how international aid and development work operates,"
said Woojin Jung, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work and the principal investigator of the study. He notes that organizations could get real-time insights into community needs by analyzing what people are talking about online, rather than waiting years between expensive surveys.
Author's summary: Rutgers researchers use Twitter to measure poverty.