What is ContextMiner?

ContextMiner is a framework to collect, analyze, and present the contextual information along with the data. It is based on an idea that while describing or archiving an object, contextual information helps to make sense of that object or to preserve it better. This website provides tools to collect data, metadata, and contextual information off the Web by automated crawls. At present, ContextMiner supports automated crawls from blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and open Web. It also collects inlinks information for YouTube videos from the Web. Additional sources will continue to be added. The initial development of ContextMiner was supported by NSF grant #IIS 0455970.

What can I do with ContextMiner?

ContextMiner helps you (1) run automated crawls on various social media sources on the Web and collect data as well as contextual information, (2) analyze and add value to collected data and context, and (3) monitor digital objects of interest. Following is a typical flow of using ContextMiner:

  1. Start a new campaign based on some story, concept, or an object.
  2. Choose the sources (Web, Blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr) that you want ContextMiner to do your searches and crawls on.
  3. Once you provide all the required parameters, ContextMiner can immediately start running your campaign. You can access all your campaigns and collected data as well as contextual information through this website.
  4. You can manipulate individual items as well as related items that are collected by the above processes to add your interpretation and meaning to the campaign.

Creating a campaign

You can create a new campaign in ContextMiner with just two easy steps.

  1. Enter a name for your campaign.
  2. Select the sources to collect data and contextual information from and enter your queries or URLs. At present, ContextMiner supports YouTube, blogs, Flickr, Twitter, and collecting inlinks from the Web.

Working with collected data and contextual information

Once a campaign is created, ContextMiner can start collecting data and contextual information almost immediately. The owner of the campaign can then start working with the collected items. With ContextMiner, one can access their running campaigns via a web-based interface. Following actions are possible for a campaign created with ContextMiner.

  1. View the up-to-date information about each of your campaigns.
  2. Pause, resume, or delete a campaign.
  3. View the objects collected from a given source (Web, blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter) for a given campaign.
  4. Pause, resume, or delete a query.
  5. Add a new query for any of the sources.
  6. Provide judgments (relevant, non-relevant, neutral) to collected data items or contextual information items.
  7. Delete a collected data item or contextual information item.
  8. Export the campaign with all of its data in XML or CSV format.

In the News

At Events

What's New?

New in Beta 4

New in Beta 3.3

New in Beta 3.2

New in Beta 3.1

New in Beta 3

New in Beta 2

New in Beta 1

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