Studying national and international migration flows with Twitter data

Master Thesis presentation.

Human migration is the movement of people from one place to another with the

intentions of settling, permanently or temporarily, in a new location. It is for sure an

activity that have strongly characterized human history. There are many reasons to

move: natural disasters, diseases, economic crisis, discrimination, learning stays, all

lead to the need of going to live in a different place. In taking the decision about the

destination, the cost and the risk of the journey must be considered. The distance,

cost of living and traveling are all parameters to deal with. The purpose of this thesis is twofold: first, I aim at exploring the usefulness

of social network data/micro-blogging to monitor migrations within Europe. This

includes the validation of the migration flows obtained online versus census data.

As it is shown, the online data can provide a valuable view on the flows not cap-

tured by the census/registration offices. Secondly, known models for characterizing

mobility flows (Gravity and Intervening Opportunities) are tested on the obtained

migration network.