We Know Where You Are: In Space and Place - Enriching the Geographical Context through Social Media

The convergence of social media and GIS provides an opportunity to reconcile space-based GIS and place-based social media. For this purpose, the authors conduct an empirical study in Columbus, Ohio, aiming to enrich both the spatial and platial context of geo-tagged data, using location-based social media Foursquare checkins as an example. An exploratory analytical approached is used to enrich the geographic context of social media data in both space and place. Specifically, exploratory spatial data analysis and point of interest matching are applied to analyze about 50,000 checkins crawled from social media feeds. It is found that checkins tend to be spatially clustered near the center of the city. Popular places related to food, services, and retail shopping venues are more likely to be reported by social media users. The authors also conducted platial analysis of the top 25 popular place venues in the study area.