University of the Highlands and Islands UI110012 Dissertation

BSc (Hons) Computing Assessment 1: Proposal

Assessment submission 1: Dissertation Proposal

Student name: Ryan Spicer

Student number: 16011229

Project title: How Social Media Ratings Affect Users

Supervisor: Dr Malcolm Clark

Partner college: Moray College

Project summary/overview
What is the product? What is your goal? What is the justification for your project? This should include a rough overview of
the requirements, both functional and non-functional. There is no need for detailed scoping at this stage. [300 words]
Project Goal:

The goal of this project is to research and discuss social media ratings and how they affect the user
and the users’ mental health, but also to look into surrounding topics to therefore give me a further
and clearer understanding of what the effects of a rating system is and to what extent they
occur.The goal of this project is to research social media ratings and how they affect the user and the
user’s mental health, this will be done through both archival study and the use of qualitative survey
questions and the sentiment analysis of the answers.

The development of my dissertation will be the qualitative study through the use of an online
survey, which will have open-flow text boxes for the user to write in-depth about their answers, and
the data obtained from all of the will go through a sentimental analysis to obtain the collective
thoughts of all the questions in the survey. The people found for the survey can be anyone, I will
most likely find people in online forums (e.g. reddit.com) and through the use of personal social
media. a website that holds information from my studies, these will be added to as I go through the
process of reading and writing the dissertation, the website will also hold a survey for the end-user,
these end-users will most likely be taken from forums for a more diverse and larger range of
feedback.

Functional requirements:

- Working Created ssurvey to collect answers/data, this will be through the use of
onlinesurveys.ac.uk, which is approved by UHI A survey system

- Working Sentiment Analysis through the use of a Machine Learning tool (e.g. WEKA,
Python)- Multiple pages including information of my studies

- To be hosted outside of localhost

Non-functional requirements:

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BSc (Hons) Computing Assessment 1: Proposal

- Visualisation of the data Visually Pleasing CSS

- Responsive Web Design

- Log-in System

Justification:

Functional Requirements:

The reason why these three are functional requirements is that, firstly, the survey system is so the
users can give their choices and then that will fuel my studies with more data that I can utilise,
secondly, the pages including information of my studies, these will include details on why I am doing
this project and as I go through the dissertation, these pages will grow dependant on what I discover
and what I feel is necessary to add, and finally, to be hosted outside of localhost, this one more
simple, just so people outwith my network can access and use the website.Both the survey creation
and Sentiment Analysis are functional as without either one of them, the development of the
dissertation would be incomplete, with solely a survey, I will not be able to get as much data from it
as if I were to have a working sentiment analysis script/tool, and if I had solely a sentiment analysis
script/tool I would not have any data to analyse. These both will display how users feel about certain
topics surrounding mental health and social media ratings, and help fuel my research for the
dissertation as a whole.

Non-Functional Requirements:

Both the Visually Pleasing CSS and the responsive web design are both non-functional as they solely
affect how the website looks and how well the user can interact with them, and therefore they will
not affect the completion of the development. The log-in system on the other hand is a useful tool
that I could use for the site, to let the user log-in for the survey, but depending on how I tackle the
survey, I could take one from another site and implement it into mine, making the log-in system
redundant.The visualisation of data is a non-functional requirement as the visualisation only aids the
development and the presentation of the output, rather than the development and presentation
relying on the visualisation for the project to be successful. The visualisation of data benefits the
project by clearly representing the sentiment analysis of the questions answered in the survey.

Previous work
Short summary and discussion of previous work known (not a full literature review yet). [200 words]
There have been many talks by “Dr. Alok Kanojia” [kanojiapsychiatry.com, 2020], where he
interviews many content creators and viewers of his and discusses an array of topics which range
from communities as a whole to individual peoples’ mental health. [twitch.tv, 2020]

Black Mirror, a Sci-fi series, set in a dystopian future, which tells different stories every episode
focused on a “Social rating system”, in Series 3, Episode 1 “Nosedive”, which shows a perspective of
many different people and how they may be affected by the rating system. [Netflix.com, 2016]

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BSc (Hons) Computing Assessment 1: Proposal

There have been studies into the increase of people going to social media and engaging in peer-to-
peer support and how this could therefore promote physical and mental health wellbeing. [J. A.
Naslund, 2016]

There have been many implementations of sentiment analysis using WEKA, the main subject, when
searched were for classifying tweets [YouTube.com, 2016]There are many survey creation tools
available, all of which that I have tried already have a sign-up process so my experience is lacking
with them, but with that in mind, I can opt out of the creation of a self-created survey through the
use of something like JavaScript and use this instead. Tools such as “Strawpoll.me” also have checks
on the user’s IP so people cannot vote multiple times., and others included classifying non-specific
text. [Prakruti Chandak, 2020]

Technologies
Proposed technologies to be used (with student’s level of experience/expertise with each) and justification (including brief
discussion of alternatives). [100 words]
My proposed technologies to be used are going to be PHP, HTML and JavaScript.

The technologies that I am going to be utilising in my development will be:

- WEKA, for sentiment analysis through Machine Learning

- onlinesurveys.ac.uk, to create a survey

- Neo4j, for data visualisation

The experience I have with all three are limited to none, I used WEKA for the AI module last year and
outside that I have not used it for any Machine Learning, and I have not used either onlinesurveys or
Neo4j.

The alternatives to WEKA include:

- Amazon AWS (Amazon Web Services)

- Python

- The alternatives to Neo4j include:

- ArangoDB

- Amazon Neptune

[g2.com, 2020]

I have used all three, PHP, HTML and JavaScript, enough to be comfortable with using them, this will
make the development of smoother and leave me more time with the research side of my project.

In regards to the alternative choices for JavaScript, there are many different options that I could use,
these include Dart, Typescript and Elm [Una Rouz, 2019], the reason I never chose any of these was

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BSc (Hons) Computing Assessment 1: Proposal

down to the lack of knowledge and experience with them, the positives and negatives of these
alternatives are redundant due to the time loss I would have, especially with them being used for
possible non-functional requirements.

Development methodology
Proposed development methodology and justification (including brief discussion of alternatives). [200 words]
The development methodology I am going to be using Rapid Application Development (RAD), RAD
consists of constantly developing parts of the application, in my case the website, testing the
development, fixing any issues or bugs that have been found and loop until the project is complete,
RAD will benefit my project as with the amount of possible changes to be made, for example, the
functionality of the site, the information displayed on the site and the site layout, there can be
increased flexibility and if I decide down the line to remove or add to any of these, it would not halt
the progress of the development as much as other methodologies.

Other alternatives include:

Agile – Agile is very similar to RAD but one of the main aspects is that there is much less of a focus on
documentation and rather on the development of the program, leaving less time for all types of
documentation, including testing and design documentation, and the time that is lost is not made up
by having any sufficient gain.

Waterfall – Waterfall is split up into 7 parts, Requirements, Analysis, Design,

Coding/Implementation, Testing, Deployment and Maintenance. The waterfall methodology makes
it that the developer does not overlap the parts and does them one by one in a linear order, the
reason I am not using this is that the non-overlapping of parts is something that I will struggle with
and therefore time would be lost with no gain.[Margaret Rouse, 2019]

Project plan/timeline
Proposed timeline with major milestones. (No need for a formal Gantt chart, although that could be good. Whether it’s text
or a diagram, this needs to be clear and reasonably detailed.) [100 words or equivalent in diagram]
10/2020: Initial research and reading.

100/2020: Set up WEKA and create account for onlinesurveys.ac.ukSet up server to host website,
either through comp-server or my own

10/2020: Make sure I have all needed pre-requisites for html, php and JavaScript for everything to
run smoothly

11/2020: Start creation of all pages needed for website if not done prior to this time

11/2020: Create or import a survey system

11/2020: Create survey questions, these will have to be open-ended questionsCreate Log-in system
for the site, if opted for a self-built survey system

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BSc (Hons) Computing Assessment 1: Proposal

11/2020: Create survey using online tool (onlinesurveys.ac.uk)

0112/2021: Find multiple sources to complete survey (e.g. from twitter, forums (reddit), friend
groups)Once enough questions found and decided on, create the survey questions and post on
different forums for a wide array of feedback

01/2021: Once enough survey completions/enough data gathered, close the survey and back up the
data

01/2021: Start the preparation process of the data, this includes taking all of the data into one place
and randomising it to prepare it for machine learning training.

02/2021: Start the “Data Wrangling” process, this is the process of cleaning and converting the raw
data into a usable format and then use filtering techniques to “clean” the data.

02/2021: Carry out data analysis, this will include Machine Learning techniques such as
Classification, Regression, Cluster Analysis and Association. Building data models can also be carried
out at this stage

03/2021: Train the created Machine Learning model so it can understand various patterns, rules and
features

03/2021: Test the trained Machine Learning model to determine the percentage accuracy of the
given model

04/2021: Deployment of the Machine Learning model, use in more circumstances (e.g. classifying
tweets) to gather more sentiment analysis

Until submission date: researching, writing, updating the site with information, finalising everything

14/05/2021: Submission date

Supervisor meeting arrangements

How often? When? How? (Phone? Skype? Face to face?) We need a commitment to a weekly meeting.
My Supervisor and I will be meeting using Discord every Wednesday at 3:00 PM

Ethics
Have you read the UHI Research Ethics Framework? Have you completed a REC1 or REC1-D Student Application for Ethical
Approval form and submitted it along with this proposal? Are there any ethical risks in your project?
The form REC1 has been completed and submitted with this document. There are no ethical risks
associated with this project.

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Reference list
List all references cited above, following the UHI Student Referencing Standard.
Kanojiapsychiatry.com (2020) About Dr. Alok Kanojia [online]. Available from
<http://kanojiapsychiatry.com/about/> [3rd Oct 2020]

YouTube.com (2016) Advanced Data Mining with Weka (2.5: Classifying tweets) [online]. Available
from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jScSxkuSei8> [7th Oct 2020]

Rouse, M. (2019) Agile Software Development [online].

<https://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/agile-software-development> [3rd Oct
2020]

Netflix.com (2016) Black Mirror [online]. Available from

<https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/70264888> [3rd Oct 2020]

Twitch.tv (2020) HealthyGamer_GG - Twitch [online]. Available from

<https://www.twitch.tv/HealthyGamer_GG> [3rd Oct 2020]

javaTpoint.com (2018) Machine learning Life cycle [online]. Available from

<https://www.javatpoint.com/machine-learning-life-cycle> [7th Oct 2020]

G2.com (2020) Neo4j Alternatives & Competitors [online]. Available from

<https://www.g2.com/products/neo4j/competitors/alternatives> [7th Oct 2020]

Chandak, P. (2020) NLP using WEKA [online]. Available from

<https://medium.com/@prakrutichandak/nlp-sentiment-analysis-using-weka-hands-on-
648af0859797> [7th Oct 2020]

Rouz, U. (2019) Is There a Viable Alternative to JavaScript? [online]. Available from

<https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2019/11/is-there-a-viable-alternative-to-javascript/> [3rd Oct
2020]

Naslund, J. , Aschbrenner, K. , Marsch L. , Bartels, S. (2016) ‘The future of mental health care: peer-
to-peer support and social media’ Volume 25 (2)

Rouse, M. (2019) Waterfall model [online]. Available from

<https://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/waterfall-model> [3rd Oct 2020]

G2.com (2020) Weka Alternatives & Competitors [online]. Available from

<https://www.g2.com/products/weka/competitors/alternatives> [7th Oct 2020]

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