Text Mining Tweets on Driving Safety and Cellphone Use

Abstract

Background: Cellphone usage while driving is one of the major distractions leading to traffic accidents. Twitter as a social media platform can provide useful information to explore the specific patterns of driving safety and cellphone use. Objective: To explore the text mining of tweets about cellphone use and driving safety. Methods: Tweets with hashtags: #distracteddriving, #textanddrive and #textinganddriving were collected. By using R studio, Tableau and Gephi software, text mining, statistical analysis and visualization were completed. Results: About 10,000 tweets were congregated from November 24th, 2018 to March 11th, 2019. Messages extracted from tweets were transferred into frequencies, associations and network map that revealed the specific patterns of cellphone distracted driving. Conclusion: Retweets pertaining to driving safety and cellphone use predominated. The frequencies, associations and the network map of tweet data provided a snapshot of the cellphone distracted driving.