Fortaleza conectada: a relação entre cidade, trânsito e internet a partir do perfil do Twitter @LeiSecaFortal

Abstract

The research presents an investigation about the influence of the Internet on the relationship between man and the city. It aims to analyze how the so called "social networks" are related to mobile communication devices (cell phones, for example) while contributing to change the ratio of its users with the city. The aim is to understand how Twitter influences urban mobility in Fortaleza. The case studied is the profile @LeiSecaFortal, in Twitter, which has around 37,000 followers (as of January 2013). The @LeiSecaFortal informs his followers about the state of transit in Fortaleza, whose source contributions of various users scattered throughout differents points of city. The profile has a manager that filters messages sent by followers, replicating the greatest interest and impact to the public. With the period analized of one week (between days 10 and 16) four months (May, July, September and November), at an interval of one month for each, the content published on the profile discussed passed by a categorization, then postings were divided into six categories: 1) Blitz / Fines, 2) Accidents / Collisions, 3) Infrastructure, 4) Behavior; 5) Traffic; 6) Other. By analyzing the messages, it was found that those concerning traffic are those that appear in larger numbers. Can also see that the category Blitz / Fines have a lower frequency of retweets than the category Traffic, which indicates that this is not the biggest concern for drivers of Fortaleza that follow the profile @ LeiSecaFortal. But in July, the category of Blitz / Fines appears as the most recurrent, pointing out that, in the holiday period, the oversight is more rigid. We also performed a comparison with the same weekly clipping of March 2011. From this, it was found that in 2011 there were more posts than in 2012, and also the category of traffic to be the most applicant. Also it was found that in 2011 there were more problems related to infrastructure, which did not occur in 2012. Moreover, the category of behavior, in both years, was the least appellant, showing that drivers of Fortaleza are not interested in knowing about the behavior of others or the manager filters more often this kind of posting. It is considered that the analysis helps to understand the transformation of relations between Internet users and daily life of the city, specifically in mobility of Fortaleza. It's also observed that the profile generates statistics about the local traffic, pointing routes and times when there is greater flow of vehicles and infrastructure problems in the city.