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International Conference on Information

iConference 2020: Sustainable Digital Communities pp 32–49Cite as

Cultural Activity Diversity and Community Characteristics: An Exploratory Study

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Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNISA,volume 12051)

Abstract

Cultural diversity has been conceptualized and studied in different ways. On the one hand, cultural diversity can be conceptualized based on people’s ethnic and national backgrounds. On the other hand, cultural dimensions are defined depending on people’s behaviors and traits. Sociologists further categorized the latter depending on the degree of typicality in cultural artifacts/activities and individual’s omnivorousness for cultural tastes. Although both aspects of culture-related concepts provide meaningful implications for urban characteristics, it is still unclear how these cultural dimensions are related to other characteristics of urban areas. This paper suggests a concept of cultural activity diversity, the diversity of cultural activities as a whole in a city. We provide an exploratory analysis of the relationships between cultural characteristics and socio-economic features across 14 and 28 urban areas in the U.S, respectively, using local event datasets.

Keywords

  • Local events
  • Cultural activity diversity
  • Urban characteristics

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this paper, the term “community” is used to denote any size of geographical boundaries in a general sense. A local community could range from a neighborhood to metropolitan areas. However, the data analysis in this paper precisely focuses on the Census Urban Area as the geographical unit of analysis.

  2. 2.

    https://meetup.com.

  3. 3.

    https://eventful.com.

  4. 4.

    https://yelp.com.

  5. 5.

    U.S. Census: https://factfinder.census.gov.

  6. 6.

    As of August 2018, the demographic/economic data for 2018 is not available from the U.S. Census. Because the ACS data is created annually and does not change dramatically in a short period of time, 2017 data is reasonable to use for the purpose of this study.

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Acknowledgment

This study is part of a larger study in the first author’s dissertation work and has been extended from it. The first author’s research was partially supported by the National Science Foundation’s CHS program (#1816763) and through the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Maryland at College Park. We appreciate their generous support and reviewers’ constructive feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Sciences and Technology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 22030, USA

    Myeong Lee

  2. College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20740, USA

    Brian S. Butler

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  1. Myeong Lee
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  2. Brian S. Butler
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Correspondence to Myeong Lee .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Anneli Sundqvist

  2. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Gerd Berget

  3. University of Boras, Boras, Sweden

    Prof. Dr. Jan Nolin

  4. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad

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Lee, M., Butler, B.S. (2020). Cultural Activity Diversity and Community Characteristics: An Exploratory Study. In: Sundqvist, A., Berget, G., Nolin, J., Skjerdingstad, K. (eds) Sustainable Digital Communities. iConference 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12051. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_3

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