Exploring Patterns of Socio-spatial Interaction in the Public Spaces of City through Big Data

Abstract

[EN] Research on socio-spatial aspect of cities has never been so vibrant and exciting. The form of urban life is changing and evolving with new advancements in communication and technology. Digital communication and social media has reshaped the way people as the actors of society interact with each other and with the network of city. New social networks and widespread of mobile devises can be used to create and reinforce existing social ties. Mobile devises also change the role of citizens from consumers into producers of data; they are the new reporters, photographers, videographers of everyday life. This production creates large quantities of data known as the “Big Data”. Big data has opened up many doors for researchers to investigate new aspects of cities. This paper aims to explore how people access urban public spaces through social media by taking the parameter of distance and physical proximity into account. We tried to investigate if different levels of accessibility effects the way people interact with space through social media. Through this process the study explored different socio-spatial patterns in the city that are being affected by social media. The research data was collect in two layers of Nicosia in Northern Cyprus: first, the geo-tagged social media data was collected from the target group, and it was located on the map. Twitter as a microblogging medium was selected for data collection due to its public nature, geo-tagged abilities, and manageable short content. Second, degrees of accessibility in local and global scale were calculated using Space Syntax. The data was analyzed using regression analysis, scatter plot, and outlier detention. The result shows various patterns in correlation of interactions between society and space; it illustrates the importance of exploring the outliers when reading big data on the city. The result shows clear importance of local accessibility even when social media is the effective variable.