Characterizing the Mobile Phone Use Patterns of Refugee-Hosting Provinces in Turkey

We use coarse-grained mobile phone data from a large Turkish mobile phone provider and cross-reference this data with social media data and a qualitatively composed violent events list to explore the integration of refugees in Turkey. The data provides grounds for fruitful future research. It suggests that border communities with the refugee-sending country have much different communications patterns than non-border communities. Additionally, proximity to refugee camps may increase negative sentiment on social media toward refugees, which we suggest may be a proxy for understanding “compassion fatigue.” These findings provide directions for future research on integration.