Social dynamics of Twitter usage in London, Paris, and New York City

Authors

  • Muhammad Adnan Department of Geography, University College London
  • Paul A. Longley Department of Geography, University College London
  • Shariq M. Khan Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, Brunel University London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i5.4820

Keywords:

Twitter, Ethnicity, Geospatial Analysis

Abstract

The penetration and use of social media services differs from city to city. This paper investigates the social dynamics of Twitter social media usage in three ethnically diverse cities — London, Paris, and New York City. We present a spatial analysis of Tweeting activity in the three cities, broken down by ethnicity and gender. We model the ethnic identity of Twitter users using their paired forenames and surnames. The geo–tagged Tweets provide an insight into the geography of their activity patterns across the three cities. The gender of each Twitter user is identified through classification of forenames, suggesting that, irrespective of the ethnic identity, the majority of Twitter users are male. Taken together, the results present a window on the activity patterns of different ethnic groups.

Author Biographies

Muhammad Adnan, Department of Geography, University College London

I am working as post-doctoral Research Associate at the Department of Geography, University College London. My research focus is on data mining, social media analysis, algorithm optimisation, and visualisation of large spatio-temporal databases.

Paul A. Longley, Department of Geography, University College London

Paul A. Longley is a Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London. His publications include 14 books and more than 125 refereed journal articles and book chapters. He is a co-editor of the journal Environment and Planning B and a member of five other editorial boards. He has held ten externally-funded visiting appointments and given over 150 conference presentations and external seminars.

Shariq M. Khan, Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, Brunel University London

Shariq M. Khan is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Brunel University. His research interest includes routing in mobile and vehicular ad hoc networks.

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Published

2014-05-01

How to Cite

Adnan, M., Longley, P. A., & Khan, S. M. (2014). Social dynamics of Twitter usage in London, Paris, and New York City. First Monday, 19(5). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i5.4820

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Section

Articles