First, in a step typically called preprocessing, the researchers converted the social media posts into a document-term matrix, where there was one row for each document and one column that recorded whether the post contained a specific word (e.g., protest or traffic).
Okokuqala, kancane kancane ngokuvamile ebizwa ngokuthi pre-processing, abacwaningi bashintsha leli izikhala abezindaba social ibe matrix umculu-term, lapho kwakukhona khona umugqa owodwa idokhumenti ngayinye kanye nalowo ikholomu aqoshiwe noma iposi linegama ethize (isib, umbhikisho, traffic, njll).