October 2013: Citizens around the world can monitor global priorities for development via Global Pulse, an initiative of the UN Secretary-General. Global Pulse displays the top 20 countries that tweet the most about development topics through an interactive visualization. By analyzing tweets, Global Pulse shows what everyday people prioritize and discuss, regardless of their involvement in the official post-2015 process.

Global Pulse displays the results on a spinning globe, with the country rankings and percentages listed to the side. For instance, Ukraine, Zimbabwe and Australia are the top three countries with tweets about action taken on climate change. People in Equatorial Guinea tweet the most about protecting forests, rivers and oceans, followed by people in France and Senegal. Croatia, Rwanda and Panama tweet the most about access to clean water and sanitation.

Global Pulse created the visualization by mining English, French, Portuguese and Spanish tweets from 188 countries. The percentages show the volume of tweets generated about the development topic in a country in comparison to all other tweets. The proportion of tweets show the volume of tweets about the topic in relation to tweets about all other post-2015 topics generated in the country.

Global Pulse is the UN’s ‘innovation hub.’ It explores how digital data sources and technologies, including Big Data and real-time analytics, can help policymakers understand the priorities and needs of populations, as well as measure programme impacts. Global Pulse is headquartered in New York, US, and has Pulse Labs in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Kampala, Uganda. [Global Pulse Post-2015 Analysis]