Tweet My Street: A Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration for the Analysis of Local Twitter Data

Abstract

Tweet My Street is a cross-disciplinary project exploring the extent to which data derived from Twitter can reveal more about spatial and temporal behaviours and the meanings attached to these locally. This is done with a longer-term view to supporting the coproduction and delivery of local services, complaint mechanisms and horizontal community support networks. The project has involved the development of a web-based software application capable of retrieving, storing and visualising geo-located “tweets” (and associated digital content) from Twitter’s Firehose. This has been piloted in Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) and has proven a scalable tool that can aid the analysis of social media data geographically. Beyond explaining efforts to analyse pilot data via this software, this paper elucidates three methodological challenges encountered during early collaboration. These include issues relating to “proximity” with subjects, ethics and critical questions about scholars’ digital responsibilities during the neogeographic turn.

Keywords

• neogeography
• big data
• social media
• geo-location
• social inquiry