Refugee crisis and big data

Liisi Laineste
Estonian Literary Museum

There have been recent suggestions that big data analytics can help with modeling the trends in the influx of new refugees, describe the sentiments in the countries involved, or predict areas of conflict, which will in turn help to design politics and start discussions.

I will look at some points of entry into this topic and refer to pioneering works in the area involving big data analysis. In the presentation, I will also attempt at a more micro-level description and follow discussions about accepting refugees to Europe (particularly to Estonia) in different online environments ranging from highly regulated ones (e.g. Facebook) to very anonymous and non-regulated ones (e.g. comments that don’t require signing in before posting).