System and method for large scale crowdsourcing of map data cleanup and correction

A system for retrieving and geolocating a plurality of social media content, comprising:

• a geolocation software module comprising at least a plurality of programming instructions stored in a memory and operating on a processor of a computing device and configured to perform at least a geolocation operation, the geolocation operation comprising at least the following steps:
• receiving social media content from a social media provider;
• extracting any available metadata information present in or associated with a social media content posting;
• extracting any embedded location data present in or associated with the social media content posting;
• identifying an author of the social media content posting;
• determining if the metadata storage contains location-related data about the author, if one was successfully identified;
• determining if location data pertaining to a physical location of the author at the time of posting of the social media content posting is available;
• identifying any known place names present in or associated with the social media content posting;
• if multiple locations are identified, disambiguating the locations to determine a most likely location using a crowdsourced location disambiguation process;
• and
• geotagging the social media content posting and storing the resulting geotagged social media content posting in the database, wherein geotagging comprises associating location-based information with a respective social media content posting.