Does Social Media Reflect Metropolitan Attractiveness? Behavioral Information from Twitter Activity in Urban Areas

Abstract

The rapid and ongoing evolution of mobile devices allows for increasing ubiquity of online handhelds, yet boosting the recent growth of social platforms. This development facilitates participation in social media for an enormous amount of individuals independently from time and location. When navigating through a city and especially when following activities worthy to be shared with others, people uncover their traces in both geographical and temporal dimension. Using these traces to spot popular areas in a metropolitan region is valuable to a broad variety of applications, reaching from city planning to venue recommendation and investment. We propose a density-based method to determine the attractiveness of areas based solely on spatial and content characteristics of Twitter activity. Furthermore, we show the relation of attached images, videos, or linked places to the activity users are engaged in and assess the explanatory power of Twitter messages in a geographical context.