Social Media Data as a Source for Studying People’s Perception and Knowledge of Environments

Abstract

Recently, the increasing availability of online social network and media-sharing services (e.g. Facebook, Foursquare and Flickr) has led to the accumulation of large volumes of social media data. These data, especially geotagged ones, contain lots of information about people's perception of and experiences in various environments. This article presents three case studies to illustrate the potential of these data for understanding people's perception and knowledge of environments, especially urban environments. Results of the case studies show that social media data are a useful source for studying how people perceive, conceptualise, and feel about environments. Finally, this article discusses some socio-technical challenges that need further investigations when analysing social media data, such as the "digital divide", data quality, and privacy.