Evaluating Neighbourhood Sentiment during Melbourne’s Covid-19 lockdowns

Assessing Melbournian’s neighbourhood sentiment through social media and the influence of the built environment on this satisfaction during Melbourne’s Covid-19 lockdowns.

• Investigators

  • • Associate Professor Liton Kamruzzaman
    • Professor Carl Grodach
    Monash Art, Design and Architecture
  • • Professor Dickson Lukose
    • Professor Geoff Webb
    Monash Data Futures Institute

• Funded by

  • The Melbourne Experiment

Social media reveals a unique perspective into resident’s satisfaction with their neighbourhoods and how this evolved through Melbourne’s lockdown periods.  This dashboard enables policy makers and members of the public to view the sentiment in their area and how this relates to their built environment.  Comparing this to other areas, the dashboard is able to offer insight into the needs of residents from their neighbourhoods and how these needs change in a crisis.

Dr Alexa Gower

Utilising Twitter posts collected over 2020, this project analyses sentiment within over 300 Melbourne suburbs and maps this against the characteristics, amenity levels, and urban form present in the suburb.

Associations are identified between neighbourhood types, positive/negative sentiments and neighbourhood satisfaction during the Covid-19 lockdowns by visualising this data on both a digital dashboard, displaying quantities and changes in sentiment over time for an area, and the Melbourne Digital City which models the data spatially.