Techniques for detecting an event via social media content. A method includes obtaining multiple images from at least one social media source; extracting at least one visual semantic concept from the multiple images; differentiating an event semantic concept signal from a background semantic concept signal to detect an event in the multiple images; retrieving one or more images associated with the event semantic concept signal; grouping the one or more images associated with the event semantic concept signal; annotating the group of one or more images with user feedback; and displaying the annotated group of one or more images as a visual description of the detected event.