36 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
# crosspost
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**crosspost** is a browser-based tool designed to support *digital ethnography*, the study of how people interact, communicate, and form culture in online spaces such as forums, social media platforms, and comment-driven communities.
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The project aims to make it easier for students, researchers, and journalists to collect, organise, and explore online discourse in a structured and ethical way, without requiring deep technical expertise.
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By combining data ingestion, analysis, and visualisation in a single system, crosspost turns raw online interactions into meaningful insights about how conversations emerge, evolve, and spread across platforms.
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## Goals for this project
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- Collect data ethically: enable users to link/upload text, images, and interaction data (messages etc) from specified online communities. Potentially and automated method for importing (using APIs or scraping techniques) could be included as well.
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- Organise content: Store gathered material in a structured database with tagging for themes, dates, and sources.
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Analyse patterns: Use natural language processing (NLP) to detect frequent keywords, sentiment, and interaction networks.
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- Visualise insights: Present findings as charts, timelines, and network diagrams to reveal how conversations and topics evolve.
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- Have clearly stated and explained ethical and privacy guidelines for users. The student will design the architecture, implement data pipelines, integrate basic NLP models, and create an interactive dashboard.
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Beyond programming, the project involves applying ethical research principles, handling data responsibly, and designing for non-technical users. By the end, the project will demonstrate how computer science can bridge technology and social research — turning raw online interactions into meaningful cultural insights.
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## Scope
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This project focuses on:
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- Designing a modular data ingestion pipeline
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- Implementing backend data processing and storage
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- Integrating lightweight NLP-based analysis
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- Building a simple, accessible frontend for exploration and visualisation
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# Requirements
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- **Python** ≥ 3.9
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- **Python packages** listed in `requirements.txt`
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**Note**: Some packages require system-level PostgreSQL libraries. Install them as follows:
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### Ubuntu / Debian
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`sudo apt install libpq-dev python3-dev`
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### Arch
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`sudo pacman -S postgresql-libs postgresql`
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