Is data from social networking sites helpful in understanding and describing the dynamics of cultural life in the city? Information posted on Facebook makes it possible not only to follow the interests of individual users, but also the links between the users and cultural events and their organisers. Our Facebook data analysis workshop, sets out to examine the content published on institutional Facebook pages and the interactions and behaviours of people interested in Katowice culture.

Of particular interest to us will be a number of issues of the research into local culture conducted by Medialab Katowice as part of the Shared Cities project. We will study and visualise certain affiliations, i.e., the relationships between events and users taking interest in them, and investigate the “loyalty” of participants of selected cultural events in consecutive years. We will also try to create a method for studying trends in Katowice culture based on the content of posts published by institutions, including, among others, spatial data and user interactions.

The workshop will involve several strong interdisciplinary teams, made up of people with different skills and experience, working with data on cultural events in Katowice which was previously acquired using a public API. Having developed the guidelines for individual tools, will go on to create their prototypes allowing us to carry out data analyses and visualisations. We welcome all individuals of different backgrounds, from cultural researchers, sociologists, designers, programmers and analysts, to representatives of public institutions and non-governmental organisations.