Beyond the geotag: situating ‘big data’ and leveraging the potential of the geoweb

Abstract

This article presents an overview and initial results of a geoweb analysis designed to provide the foundation for a continued discussion of the potential impacts of ‘big data’ for the practice of critical human geography. While Haklay's (2012) observation that social media content is generated by a small number of ‘outliers’ is correct, we explore alternative methods and conceptual frameworks that might allow for one to overcome the limitations of previous analyses of user-generated geographic information. Though more illustrative than explanatory, the results of our analysis suggest a cautious approach toward the use of the geoweb and big data that are as mindful of their shortcomings as their potential.

More specifically, we propose five extensions to the typical practice of mapping georeferenced data that we call going ‘beyond the geotag’: (1) going beyond social media that is explicitly geographic; (2) going beyond spatialities of the ‘here and now’; (3) going beyond the proximate; (4) going beyond the human to data produced by bots and automated systems, and (5) going beyond the geoweb itself, by leveraging these sources against ancillary data, such as news reports and census data. We see these extensions of existing methodologies as providing the potential for overcoming existing limitations on the analysis of the geoweb.

The principal case study focuses on the widely reported riots following the University of Kentucky men's basketball team's victory in the 2012 NCAA championship and its manifestation within the geoweb. Drawing upon a database of archived Twitter activity – including all geotagged tweets since December 2011–we analyze the geography of tweets that used a specific hashtag (#LexingtonPoliceScanner) in order to demonstrate the potential application of our methodological and conceptual program. By tracking the social, spatial, and temporal diffusion of this hashtag, we show how large databases of such spatially referenced internet content can be used in a more systematic way for critical social and spatial analysis.

Keywords:

• geoweb
• #LexingtonPoliceScanner
• big data
• Twitter
• geotag

Acknowledgments

This research received funding support for DOLLY through The New Mappings Collaboratory, an initiative of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky.

Notes

1. Hashtags are text strings that are used to organize tweets from a diverse range of sources that all relate or speak to a central idea or theme.

2. The total number of tweets reached about 170 billion as of January 2013 (Library of Congress 2013).

3. Based on our database of Twitter activity since December 2011, we estimate that geotagged tweets account for approximately 1.5% of all tweets, though this number is steadily growing.

4. In this context, retweets are only those tweets that start with ‘RT.’

5. Although we did not have the resources in place for the events of April 2012, our group recently performed a ‘drone’ flight over another UK basketball event, which involved fans camping out in tents on the campus in order to get tickets for the season's first practice. From the imagery, we can estimate the crowd size. We recognize that the issue of unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) or drones is a contentious one, especially given the increasing usage of drones within the United States. Although space precludes it here, an analysis of the political economy of drones and surveillance would illuminate the larger context of this aspect of the geoweb.