IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v47y2015i2p465-484.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Geotemporal Demographics of Twitter Usage

Author

Listed:
  • Paul A Longley
  • Muhammad Adnan
  • Guy Lansley

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary empirical evaluation of the strategic importance of infusing Twitter social media data into classifications of small areas, as a way of moving beyond the nighttime residential geographies of conventional geodemographic classifications. We attempt an empirically based critique of the merits and drawbacks of the use of social media data, in which the value of high spatial and temporal granularity of revealed activity patterns is contrasted with the paucity of individual attribute information. We apply new and novel methods to enrich the profiles of Twitter users in order to generalize about activity patterns in London, our case-study city. More insidious problems in the use of social media data arise from the as-yet-unknown sources and operation of bias in their user bases. Our contribution is to begin to identify and assess the biases inherent in social media usage in social research, and use these to evaluate their deployment in research applications.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul A Longley & Muhammad Adnan & Guy Lansley, 2015. "The Geotemporal Demographics of Twitter Usage," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 47(2), pages 465-484, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:2:p:465-484
    DOI: 10.1068/a130122p
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a130122p
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a130122p?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Donald L. Foley & Gerald Breese, 1951. "The Standardization of Data Showing Daily Population Movement into Central Business Districts," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(4), pages 348-353.
    2. Pablo Mateos & Paul A Longley & David O'Sullivan, 2011. "Ethnicity and Population Structure in Personal Naming Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(9), pages 1-12, September.
    3. Mark Graham & Matthew Zook, 2013. "Augmented Realities and Uneven Geographies: Exploring the Geolinguistic Contours of the Web," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(1), pages 77-99, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lansley, Guy & Longley, Paul, 2016. "Deriving age and gender from forenames for consumer analytics," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 271-278.
    2. Giulia Sonetti & Emanuele Naboni & Martin Brown, 2018. "Exploring the Potentials of ICT Tools for Human-Centric Regenerative Design," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-14, April.
    3. Hasnat, Md Mehedi & Faghih-Imani, Ahmadreza & Eluru, Naveen & Hasan, Samiul, 2019. "Destination choice modeling using location-based social media data," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 22-34.
    4. Anna Kovacs-Gyori & Alina Ristea & Clemens Havas & Bernd Resch & Pablo Cabrera-Barona, 2018. "#London2012: Towards Citizen-Contributed Urban Planning Through Sentiment Analysis of Twitter Data," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(1), pages 75-99.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kai On Wong & Osmar R Zaïane & Faith G Davis & Yutaka Yasui, 2020. "A machine learning approach to predict ethnicity using personal name and census location in Canada," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-16, November.
    2. Crescenzi, Riccardo & Nathan, Max & Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés, 2016. "Do inventors talk to strangers? On proximity and collaborative knowledge creation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 177-194.
    3. Chiara Certomà, 2020. "Digital Social Innovation and Urban Space: A Critical Geography Agenda," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 8-19.
    4. Jens Kandt & Paul A Longley, 2018. "Ethnicity estimation using family naming practices," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-24, August.
    5. Chiara Certomà, 2020. "Digital Social Innovation and Urban Space: A Critical Geography Agenda," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 8-19.
    6. Matthew W Wilson & Mark Graham, 2013. "Situating Neogeography," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(1), pages 3-9, January.
    7. Agnieszka Leszczynski, 2016. "Speculative futures: Cities, data, and governance beyond smart urbanism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(9), pages 1691-1708, September.
    8. Sophia Drakopoulou, 2017. "“We Can Remember It for You†: Location, Memory, and Commodification in Social Networking Sites," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(3), pages 21582440177, July.
    9. Kalypso Nicolaidis & Michele Giovanardi, 2022. "Global PeaceTech: Unlocking the Better Angels of our Techne," RSCAS Working Papers 2022/66, European University Institute.
    10. Lansley, Guy & Longley, Paul, 2016. "Deriving age and gender from forenames for consumer analytics," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 271-278.
    11. Stefano Breschi & Francesco Lissoni & Gianluca Tarasconi, 2014. "Inventor Data for Research on Migration and Innovation: A Survey and a Pilot," WIPO Economic Research Working Papers 17, World Intellectual Property Organization - Economics and Statistics Division.
    12. Muhammad Adnan & Paul Longley, 2013. "Featured Graphic. Tweets by Different Ethnic Groups in Greater London," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(7), pages 1524-1527, July.
    13. Cummins, Neil, 2024. "Ethnic Wealth Inequality in England and Wales, 1858-2018," CEPR Discussion Papers 19398, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Alberto Acerbi & Vasileios Lampos & Philip Garnett & R Alexander Bentley, 2013. "The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-6, March.
    15. Arthur Hughes & Michael A. Urban & Dariusz Wójcik, 2021. "Alternative ESG Ratings: How Technological Innovation Is Reshaping Sustainable Investment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-23, March.
    16. Neil Cummins, 2022. "The hidden wealth of English dynasties, 1892–2016," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(3), pages 667-702, August.
    17. Jung, Jay Heon & Kumar, Alok & Lim, Sonya S. & Yoo, Choong-Yuel, 2019. "An analyst by any other surname: Surname favorability and market reaction to analyst forecasts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 306-335.
    18. Aldo Mascareño & Pablo A. Henríquez & Marco Billi & Gonzalo A. Ruz, 2020. "A Twitter-Lived Red Tide Crisis on Chiloé Island, Chile: What Can Be Obtained for Social-Ecological Research through Social Media Analysis?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-38, October.
    19. Jim Thatcher, 2017. "You are where you go, the commodification of daily life through ‘location’," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(12), pages 2702-2717, December.
    20. Krzysztof Janc, 2015. "Visibility and Connections among Cities in Digital Space," Journal of Urban Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 3-21, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:2:p:465-484. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.