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Vartalaap: What Drives #AirQuality Discussions: Politics, Pollution or Pseudo-science?

Authors:

Rishiraj Adhikary,

Tanmay Srivastava,

Sarath GuttikundaAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 5, Issue CSCW1

Article No.: 96, Pages 1 - 29

https://doi.org/10.1145/3449170

Published: 22 April 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Air pollution is a global challenge for cities across the globe. Understanding the public perception of air pollution can help policymakers engage better with the public and appropriately introduce policies. Accurate public perception can also help people to identify the health risks of air pollution and act accordingly. Unfortunately, current techniques for determining perception are not scalable: it involves surveying few hundred people with questionnaire-based surveys. Using the advances in natural language processing (NLP), we propose a more scalable solution called Vartalaap to gauge public perception of air pollution via the microblogging social network Twitter. We curated a dataset of more than 1.2M tweets discussing Delhi-specific air pollution. We find that (unfortunately) the public is supportive of unproven mitigation strategies to reduce pollution, thus risking their health due to a false sense of security. We also find that air quality is a year-long problem, but the discussions are not proportional to the level of pollution and spike up when pollution is more visible. The information required by Vartalaap is publicly available and, as such, it can be immediately applied to study different societal issues across the world.

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Cited By

Guttikunda S(2024)Understanding Delhi's Diwali Emission LoadsSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.5003624Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5003624
J AS M S(2024)Air pollution perception for air quality management: a systematic review exploring research themes and future perspectivesEnvironmental Research Letters10.1088/1748-9326/ad3bd019:5(053002)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad3bd0
Guttikunda SDammalapati SPradhan GKrishna BJethva HJawahar P(2023)What Is Polluting Delhi’s Air? A Review from 1990 to 2022Sustainability10.3390/su1505420915:5(4209)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/su15054209
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Vartalaap: What Drives #AirQuality Discussions: Politics, Pollution or Pseudo-science?
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Ubiquitous and mobile computing
    1. Ubiquitous and mobile computing design and evaluation methods

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 5, Issue CSCW1

CSCW

April 2021

5016 pages

EISSN:2573-0142

DOI:10.1145/3460939

Editor:
Jeff Nichols
Apple Inc., United States

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Publication History

Published: 22 April 2021

Published in PACMHCI Volume 5, Issue CSCW1

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Cited By

Guttikunda S(2024)Understanding Delhi's Diwali Emission LoadsSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.5003624Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5003624
J AS M S(2024)Air pollution perception for air quality management: a systematic review exploring research themes and future perspectivesEnvironmental Research Letters10.1088/1748-9326/ad3bd019:5(053002)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad3bd0
Guttikunda SDammalapati SPradhan GKrishna BJethva HJawahar P(2023)What Is Polluting Delhi’s Air? A Review from 1990 to 2022Sustainability10.3390/su1505420915:5(4209)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/su15054209
Guttikunda SKa NGanguly TJawahar P(2023)Plugging the ambient air monitoring gaps in India's national clean air programme (NCAP) airshedsAtmospheric Environment10.1016/j.atmosenv.2023.119712301(119712)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2023.119712
Patel KAdhikary RPatel ZBatra NGuttikunda S(2022)Samachar: Print News Media on Air Pollution in IndiaProceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3530190.3534812(401-413)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3530190.3534812

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