Image of a City through Big Data Analytics: Colombo from the Lens of Geo-Coded Social Media Data

Sandulika Abesinghe; Nayomi Kankanamge; Tan Yigitcanlar; Surabhi Pancholi

doi:10.3390/fi15010032

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Image of a City through Big Data Analytics: Colombo from the Lens of Geo-Coded Social Media Data

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Image of a City through Big Data Analytics: Colombo from the Lens of Geo-Coded Social Media Data

Sandulika Abesinghe, Nayomi Kankanamge, Tan Yigitcanlar and Surabhi Pancholi

Future Internet, Vol.15(1), pp.1-21

2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/fi15010032

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Abstract

city image

Lynchian elements

image processing

sentiment analysis

social media analytics

urban analytics

big data analytics

urban informatics

Colombo

Sri Lanka

The image of a city represents the sum of beliefs, ideas, and impressions that people have of that city. Mostly, city images are assessed through direct or indirect interviews and cognitive mapping exercises. Such methods consume more time and effort and are limited to a small number of people. However, recently, people tend to use social media to express their thoughts and experiences of a place. Taking this into consideration, this paper attempts to explore city images through social media big data, considering Colombo, Sri Lanka, as the testbed. The aim of the study is to examine the image of a city through Lynchian elements-i.e., landmarks, paths, nodes, edges, and districts-by using community sentiments expressed and images posted on social media platforms. For that, this study conducted various analyses-i.e., descriptive, image processing, sentiment, popularity, and geo-coded social media analyses. The study findings revealed that: (a) the community sentiments toward the same landmarks, paths, nodes, edges, and districts change over time; (b) decisions related to locating landmarks, paths, nodes, edges, and districts have a significant impact on community cognition in perceiving cities; and (c) geo-coded social media data analytics is an invaluable approach to capture the image of a city. The study informs urban authorities in their placemaking efforts by introducing a novel methodological approach to capture an image of a city.

Details

Title: Image of a City through Big Data Analytics: Colombo from the Lens of Geo-Coded Social Media Data
Authors: Sandulika Abesinghe - University of Moratuwa
Nayomi Kankanamge - University of Moratuwa
Tan Yigitcanlar (Corresponding Author) - Queensland University of Technology
Surabhi Pancholi - Deakin University
Publication details: Future Internet, Vol.15(1), pp.1-21
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date published: 2023
DOI: 10.3390/fi15010032
ISSN: 1999-5903
Copyright note: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Data Availability: Not applicable.
Organisation Unit: School of Law and Society
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991068684002621
Output Type: Journal article

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Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration; International collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Computer Science, Information Systems

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