Social Media as a Tool to Understand Behaviour on the Railways

Social media plays an increasing role in how passengers communicate to, and about, train operators. In response, train operators and other rail stakeholders are adopting social media to contact their users. There are a number of opportunities for tapping this big data information stream through the overt use of technology to analyse, filter and present social media, including filtering for operational staff, or sentiment mapping for strategy. However, this analysis is predicated on a number of assumptions regarding the manner in which social media is currently being used within a railway context. In the following chapter, we present data from studies of rail social media that shed light on how big data analysis of social media exchange can support the passenger. These studies highlight important factors such as the broad range of issues covered by social media (not just disruption), the idiosyncrasies of individual train operators that need to be taken into account within social media analysis, and the time critical nature of information during disruption.