Big Data Trends in the Google Era Application to Greek Politics Business and Environmental Technology Lab Environmental Engineering Department, Democritus University of Thrace Amaryllis Mavragani & Konstantinos Tsagarakis

Big Data  Large volumes (growing exponentially)  Wide range of data sets  High processing speed

Google Tools  Google Trends  Google Correlate  Keyword Planner

Google Tools Are these tools credible enough for academic research? The answer seems to be positive

Google Tools Many published papers using Google Trends Scientific fields include:  Economics and Finance  Medicine  Behavior  Social Sciences

Aims & Scope We use these Google Tools to look into specific terms in greek politics

Google Trends  Keyword search  Select time period  Select location (Country/Worldwide) Outputs:  A ‘What’s Trending’ graph  Breakdown by City or Region  Related Searches – Breakdown by Top & Rising

Grexit A well-known term derived by the words ‘Greece’ & ‘Exit’ i.e. Greece exiting Euro

Google Trends

Default The greek word for default is “ Χρεοκοπία ”, though very commonly misspelled as “ Χρεωκοπία ”

Default

Google Trends

Different Spellings

Google Trends

 Noisy Data  Varoufakis: Greek Economics Minister  Incident with video with middle finger  Not clear if real or fake

Google Trends

Google Trends requires careful use and analysis  Normalized values Differences in results:  Misspelling  Use or not of accents

Google Correlate Keyword search Outputs:  Keyword’s correlation with other words or phrases  Line Chart  Scatter Plot

Google Correlate

 Odd correlations  Upload own time series  Instant correlation results  Line Chart & Scatter Plot

Keyword Planner  Keyword search  Breakdown by Device  Breakdown by Location

Keyword Planner

 Absolute volumes of searches  Breakdown by device allows further analysis  Only goes two years back

Conclusions Google tools  Easy  Fast  Accessible

Conclusions Google tools  Careful analysis  Languages  Misspelling  Accents  Odd correlations

Thank you