Matthieu François – Laboratoire d'Informatique de l'Université du Mans

Description:

This thesis aims to adopt data mining techniques to study commitments to ecological transition, and in particular to characterize the rise of debates on transition technologies on socionumeric networks. Social networks are an extremely interesting source of information, as the preferred medium of communication and information for protesters. Although they come with their difficulties of analysis and data collection, recent events, notably the gilets jaunes or the presidential elections, have shown that the debates that take place there easily become reality. On the other hand, recent years have seen the techniques of quantitative textual analysis and network analysis gain maturity to characterize events, the dissemination of information, the positioning of users on these networks as well as their organization into communities. These elements will enable us to better describe their social activities.

This thesis proposes to evaluate the potential of the data available on several platforms in terms of quantity, quality and the cost required for this collection. Secondly, the description of debates on the data collected will be formalized in the form of patterns and markers that can be automatically detected by algorithms. Finally, the third objective will be to analyze the evolution of these markers over time to isolate characteristics of the trajectories leading debates on social networks towards active engagement in the field. Surveys and interviews will be used to assess the relevance of the results obtained using data mining tools.

Quantitative analysis of opposition to transition technologies on social networks