Track 6 - Mobile Apps and computational systems as learning tools Authors: Felicidad García-Sánchez, Juan Cruz-Benito, Roberto Therón and José Gómez-Isla https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2f9zhSHAic&index=5&list=PLboNOuyyzZ85H9KngzY-R31GbiqFcOQbH

1. Designing and building systems and tools to
analyze visual communications on social networks
Felicidad García-Sánchez
felicidadgsanchez@usal.es
Juan Cruz-Benito
juancb@usal.es
Roberto Therón Sánchez
theron@usal.es
José Gómez Isla
pepeisla@usal.es

2. 1. Introduction
• We, the human people, learn
by imitation (i.e. using the
vision)
• Thanks to vision it is possible
to set and understand
concepts, gain knowledge and
even, communicate with the
world (using visual
communication)
• In a communication process,
the stakeholders involved
usually should master the
channel, the tools and the
semantic of the language used.

3. Do visual communication users master this process?
But… Is this principle applied to visual
communication processes in the same way?

4. 1. Introduction
• In the visual language, people
many times perform
communication based on
visual elements without having
a formal and solid knowledge
about the semantic, grammar
and vocabulary that are found
in the visual communication
tools
• This fact is broadly extended in
those media that use widely
the visual communication as
part of the information
exchange (for example the
social networks)

5. The more visual communication is present in
the communication process nowadays, the
more education and society must be prepared
to use it in a proper way

6. By analyzing how the media users utilize social networks to
communicate in a visual way
How can we analyze the visual communication
process to improve it and help users to use it
correctly?

7. 2. Goals
• Develop a tool that allow
researchers to dig in social
networks like Instagram, in order
to:
• Find common photo characteristics,
communication patterns, usage
trends
• Analyze the images involved in the
communication patterns and usage
trends
• Establish relationships between
image features and their usage
• Analyze image descriptors usage
(hashtags, comments, etc.) and their
implications in the visual
communication

8. Well, well, well… but show me how to do that!

9. We have a WIP system that crawls Instagram
data to help researchers to analyze visual
communication processes

10. 3. Why Instagram?
• Number of users: 300 millions
worldwide
• Users’ diversity (it is not a
niche social network). Many
people use it in personal
accounts
• Offers photo fixing features,
hashtags, social components,
communities of users, etc.
• Responds quickly to the events
that happen around the world
(trends measuring)

11. 3. Why Instagram?
• Only have a lack: it remove the
EXIF photo data. This EXIF
data contains info about the
dispositive that took the
photograph, possibly location
of the photo shot, etc.
• For that reasons, authors
would incorporate to the tool
they are developing other
social networks like Flickr

12. http://
instagram.felicidadgsanchez.es

13. 4. The system
• We are developing a suite of
tools that:
• Allow to find information
about users, hashtags
• Allow to make basic analysis
about photo features
• Store data analyzed allowing
to researchers the access to
previous analysis
• Perform both manual and
automatic (soon) analysis
over the images

14. Demo

15. Search tools http://instagram.felicidadgsanchez.es

16. Images search using
#nasa
http://instagram.felicidadgsanchez.es

17. Images search using
@nasa
http://instagram.felicidadgsanchez.es

18. Photo details and basic
analysis
http://instagram.felicidadgsanchez.es

19. 5. Future (and
present) work
• A dashboard that improve the
researchers review about
previous analysis
• Integration with Flickr
• Automatic analysis of common
photo characteristics
• Automatic analysis about
hashtag use evolution
• Automatic analysis of users
networks (finding trendsetters,
etc.)

20. 6. Conclusions
• There is a need of improving the
visual communication nowadays,
many people use it with no good
knowledge about the channel,
semantic and communication
tools involved
• Understanding how people use
visual communication, educators
can help to improve the use of
visual language
• To understand this
communication process, authors
are developing a system that
allow to research about visual
communication in social networks

21. Designing and building systems and tools to
analyze visual communications on social networks
Felicidad García-Sánchez
felicidadgsanchez@usal.es
Juan Cruz-Benito
juancb@usal.es
Roberto Therón Sánchez
theron@usal.es
José Gómez Isla
pepeisla@usal.es