Amplifying citizens’ voices in smart cities: An application of social media sentiment analysis in urban sciences

In the past decade, urban researchers have paid significant attention to the emergence of computer science and urban planning. According to the literature, social media as a pool of real-time citizen feedback can be investigated to inform smart city synergies. However, the success factors of such an approach have not been thoroughly investigated. In this study, various factors were derived from an extensive literature review to create an efficient e-participation platform. It is explained how our proposed platform 1) complies to the data protection regulations 2) uses advanced text analysis and natural language processing (NLP) tools to identify opinions and emotions 3) maintains persistent communication between citizens and city planners 4) incorporates creative visualisation techniques 5) is informative for its target audience 6) takes into consideration the socio-cultural diversity and 7) can be used as an informing tool in combination with offline methods of participation.