Social media data analytics for the NSW construction industry : a study on Twitter

Abstract

The primary aim of this dissertation is to explore the social interaction and relationship of people within the NSW construction industry through social media data analytics. The research objective is to perform social media data analytics through Twitter and explore the social interactions between different stakeholders in the construction industry to understand the real-world situations better. The data analytics was performed on Twitter tweets, retweets, and hashtags that were collected from four clusters on construction stakeholders in NSW, namely construction workers, companies, media, and union. Tweets, retweets, and hashtags that were collected from four clusters on construction stakeholders in NSW, namely construction workers, companies, media, and unions. The thesis seeks to perform social media data analytics in order to explore and investigate the social interactions and links between the different stakeholders that are present in the construction industry. Investigating these interactions will help reveal a multitude of other related social aspects about the stakeholders, e.g., their genuine attitudes about the construction industry and how they feel being involved in this field of work. In order to facilitate this research, a social media data analytics study was carried out to find out the links and associations that are present between the construction workers, companies, unions, and media group entities. Five types of analyses were performed, namely sentiment analysis, link analysis, topic modelling, geo-location analysis, and timeline analysis. The results indicated that there are minimal social interactions between the construction workers and the other three clusters (i.e., companies, unions, and the media). The main reason that has been attributed to this observation is the way workers operate in a rather informal and casual manner. The construction companies, unions, and the media define their behavior in a much more formal and corporate attitude, hence they tend to relate to one another more than they do with workers. A number of counteractive approaches may be enforced in an effort to restore healthy social relations between workers and the other three clusters. For example, the company management teams should endeavor to develop stronger interactions with the workers and improve the working conditions, in overall.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English