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Social Media Data Collection and Quality for Urban Studies

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Principles of Social Networking

Part of the book series: Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies ((SIST,volume 246))

Abstract

As of today, many studies have demonstrated the possibilities that geolocated data from social networks have for the study of urban phenomena. This chapter offers a retrospective and panoramic view of a selection of social networks that have been used to understand a wide range of urban dynamics. Findings from this review and previous experiences evidence that the social networks often selected and used for the purpose of assessing city dynamics share key characteristics such as (i) the locative properties; (ii) the data privacy and availability; (iii) the data potentiality to inform about specific phenomena related to the urban environment; and, (iv) the fact that they are mobile device-based platforms and, thus, users are considered as sensors, and their traces as crowd-sourced sensory information. Five exemplary social networks that meet these four conditions are dealt with in detail (Google Places, Foursquare, Twitter, Instagram and Airbnb), highlighting the opportunities and challenges they portray with respect to data collection and quality for the purpose of urban studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Building Sciences and Urbanism Department, University of Alicante, Carretera San Vicente del Raspeig s/n, 03690, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain

    Álvaro Bernabeu-Bautista, Leticia Serrano-Estrada & Pablo Martí

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  1. Álvaro Bernabeu-Bautista
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  2. Leticia Serrano-Estrada
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  3. Pablo Martí
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology Silchar, Cachar, Assam, India

    Anupam Biswas

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology Silchar, Silchar, Assam, India

    Ripon Patgiri

  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi, India

    Bhaskar Biswas

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Bernabeu-Bautista, Á., Serrano-Estrada, L., Martí, P. (2022). Social Media Data Collection and Quality for Urban Studies. In: Biswas, A., Patgiri, R., Biswas, B. (eds) Principles of Social Networking. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 246. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3398-0_11

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