Exploring NLP Applications in Food Research: my ATRIUM TNA visit to the GATE group

By Tenia Panagiotou

As a postdoctoral researcher at the Consumer and Sensory Lab of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition of the University of the Aegean, Greece, I study food consumption-related phenomena and consumer expression on social media. In this context, I find that Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools can significantly enhance data collection and analysis. With a background in linguistics, I explore how language can reveal insights into consumer behaviour, culture-specific and cross-cultural food-related trends, attitudes toward products and brands, and consumer expectations. To deepen my understanding of NLP tools and computational applications in social media research, I sought further training in this field.

Pic.1: Collecting posts on social media to investigate food related phenomena: sustainable meat alternatives (left), local versus imported cheeses (right).

The ATRIUM project through its TNA scheme has provided me with the invaluable opportunity to visit the School of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield and explore applications of the GATE cloud tools in my research. Although my visit was relatively short (January 20–31, 2025), it was exceptionally enlightening. I had the privilege of working closely with members of the GATE group, experts in NLP, who welcomed me into their working meetings, discussed my research challenges, and provided insightful solutions and guidance.

Pic. 2: My office away from home at the GATE headquarters (School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield). 

During my visit, I explored various GATE tools relevant to my research. Some of those tools were still under development, and the researchers were kind enough to grant me access, assist me in their application, and discuss possible extensions. One particularly useful tool was the Topic Extractor for social media hashtags, which can be used to analyze food consumption-related concepts and generate hierarchical concept graphs. The TwitIE Named Entity Recognizer proved particularly valuable in accurately identifying individual words within multiword hashtags—one of the key challenges I had been aiming to resolve. 

Pic. 3: Screenshot of the TwitIE Named Entity Recognizer that can identify words in multiword hashtags (last row).

Additionally, the Named Entity Recognizer offered significant insights by extracting predefined entities such as geopolitical locations, organizations, nationalities, and time references, enriching the analysis of consumer social media posts. I also explored sentiment analysis and opinion mining tools, while investigating how the user classification tool could be adapted for use across different platforms. Another intriguing discovery was the Multilingual Persuasion Technique Classifier, which presents exciting possibilities for analyzing professional posts on food products on social media.

 

Pic. 4: Identifying languages in posts, translating into English, and running Named Entity Recognition to be used for semantic network analysis. 

Beyond these tools, I also received valuable guidance on optimizing ChatGPT and Large Language Models for consistency in responses and on clustering social media post hashtags into semantically meaningful groups for further analysis. Both of these challenges were high on my research agenda, and I am grateful for the specialized insights I received. Apart from the technical expertise I gained, engaging in discussions on shared research interests, such as ontology and semantic network development, was one of the most rewarding aspects of my visit. The openness of the GATE team to exploring extensions of their existing tools and fostering future collaborations made this experience particularly enriching.

Pic. 5: St George's Church, a former parish church (now part of the University of Sheffield as a lecture theatre and student housing) has been my view from the office.

I am deeply grateful to the members of the GATE group for their time, generosity, and willingness to support me both technically and personally. A special thanks goes to Dr. Maynard, who oversaw my visit, for guiding my "investigations" and for our insightful conversations. I would also like to thank Mrs. Wright, research project assistant to the GATE group, for handling the logistical details of my trip and stay in Sheffield, as well as for helping out with the required documentation.

This visit was an invaluable experience that has significantly shaped my research perspective. I look forward to applying what I have learned and fostering further collaborations with the GATE team. I strongly believe that this will not be my last visit to the GATE infrastructure.

                  

GATE team hosts its first ATRIUM TNA research visit: Using NLP to understand trends in political and social debate

In December 2024, we hosted research visitor Tasos Galanopoulos as part of  the ATRIUM project (Advancing fronTier Research In the arts and hUManities) TransNational Access scheme. ATRIUM's aim is to bridge 4 leading research infrastructures in: arts and humanities (DARIAH), archaeology (ARIADNE), language technology (CLARIN), and open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities (OPERAS). The Transnational Access (TNA) scheme offers fully funded placements for researchers across Europe. This initiative is designed to support Arts and Humanities researchers by providing access to expert knowledge, mentorship, and tools from leading Data Management organisations. Successful applicants have the opportunity to visit one of 14 different host organisations across Europe in order to conduct their research, benefiting from direct contact, knowledge sharing and network building. 

Tasos describes his visit below...

How can NLP tools and large language models be used to understand trends in political and social debate around major issues of the day? 

 What is the relationship between 'distant reading' and the layered understanding that these tools offer for large volumes of data, and 'close reading', understanding aspects of these topical issues?  

What role can these modern tools play in the humanities and in everyday journalistic practice?  

Questions such as these, on the occasion of a project on "Analysis of textual data from newspapers on the agreement of Greece's accession to the European Economic Community EEC (1961)", in the context of my postgraduate studies in Digital Humanities at the Open University of Greece, brought me to the School of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield at the end of November (23/11/2024 - 7/12/2024), to collaborate with members of the GATE team.

Despite the short period of the stay, the impressions were the best: the patience and goodwill of all the team - with Dr Maynard at the forefront - helped me to "navigate" the tools offered by the GATE Cloud and the European Language Grid, to understand a bit better the processes required, and the wider field, to learn a bit more about its "alphabet" and requirements. At the same time, through the regular meetings of the team I was able to get a "glimpse" of the modern, specialised, and valuable research being carried out at the university.  

In relation to the actual subject of the research, the findings from the processing with tools such as NamedEntity Recognition, N-gram detection and their visualization with wordclouds, Topic Classification, Sentiment Analysis, Multidimensional analysis with LIWC-22, Persuasion techniques were very interesting, giving answers and insights to our questions that had to do with the attempt to develop a methodology to identify, document and frame named entities in the context of the investigation of public discourse, Press with different political orientation and political rhetoric in relation to critical events in political life, with reference to the economic and social environment inside and outside the country. Also "identifying" and categorising arguments for and against, and 'bias' for/against in the Press of that time and at a subsequent level , enabled us to explore ways to link entities to key concepts in argumentation.

 Overall, my impressions were therefore the best from this constructive visit, a visit that on a personal level gave me inspiration and opened new horizons, but also created new contacts with remarkable people.

Monitoring human rights violations against journalists

In February 2024, the Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM) hosted a research secondment focusing on discussiong how to develop monitoring of human rights violations directed at journalists. The secondment saw researchers from CFOM (Dr Diana Maynard from the GATE team, and Prof. Jackie Harrison and Dr. Gemma Horton from the School of Journalism, Media and Communication) come together with UNESCO and Free Press Unlimited to discuss the threats that journalists face and how these can be monitored in line with UN SDG16.10.1.

Following the research secondment, Dr Maynard has been awarded £35,000 to work on a collaborative project with UNESCO and Free Press Unlimited, entitled: “Influencing policy work on human rights violations against journalists”

The project focuses on monitoring and analysing non-lethal attacks on journalists in alignment with Sustainable Development Goal 16.10.1, and aims to better understand 1) the scope and context of these violations, 2) how these can be systematically and reliably monitored, resulting in the creation of 3) a database; all of which will inform future policy on monitoring safety of journalists. 

The Sheffield and FPU teams are developing a risk barometer that employs machine learning to identify patterns and indicators, helping to understand the contextual factors that predict lethal and non-lethal violence against journalists. It emphasises the crucial role of Press Freedom and Advocacy organisations in reducing these risks, highlighting the need for a proactive, evidence-based approach to forecasting threats. This strategy aims to enable earlier interventions and stronger protections for journalists globally by identifying contextual risk factors that elevate threats, such as online harassment, legal intimidation, democratic backsliding, civil conflict, and physical violence. In the first stage, it aims to accurately detect patterns and hotspots using global event data from various resources, such as GDELT, which tracks real-time global events every 15 minutes, and will utilize additional resources to gain insights into emerging risks as they arise. Simultaneously, we are connecting contextual data to data on attacks towards journalists, to gain a deeper understanding of the causes of not only lethal but also non-lethal violence towards journalists. 

Preliminary findings have identified some basic patterns: online harassment often serves as a precursor to physical intimidation. Additionally, regions such as Gaza, Ukraine, and Mexico have been identified as high-risk areas due to factors including conflict, organised crime, and authoritarian policies. Furthermore, we find that political polarisation seems strongly correlated with the level of legal threats that journalists face. These important relationships will be further investigated by the collaborative team in the upcoming months.