Natural language processing (NLP) is not a new discipline; its roots date back to the 1600s when philosophers such as Descartes and Leibniz proposed theoretical codes for language. In the past decade, the results of this long history have led to the integration of NLP into our own homes, in the form of digital assistants like Siri and Alexa. Although machine learning has remarkably accelerated the improvement of English NLP techniques, the study of NLP for other languages has always lagged behind.
Why study Arabic social media?
As the official language of 22 countries spread across the Middle-East North Africa (MENA) region, Arabic is the 4th most used language on the Internet. Statistics from 2018 show 164 million internet users in the Middle East and 121 million internet users in North Africa.