Twitter is about to become a lot more interesting to the geographer…
the point on the map this post is coming at you from
A bunch of Twitter third party applications already contain information on user location, but it is about to get a lot more interesting as Twitter prepare to release an API that can include latitude and longitude in every tweet. The feature will be optional, and of course, there will undoubtedly be cries over privacy concerns, but it’s set to make the Twitter service a lot more interesting (if not, even more exploitable by companies seeking to advertise location-based etc).
My PhD project has been experimenting with ways of using tweets and twitpics as a means of understanding human lives as they are performed in public spaces, both digitally and physically. While it has its limitations, an online style ethnography, approaching participants in this way through social media allows for a far wider range of spaces to be explored. Rather than sitting in a WiFi park or cafe approaching users with laptops, I have been chatting to users on iPhones and PDAs, on beaches, up mountains, and in back alleys all using open WiFi as a means to get online…sometimes for an instant, sometimes for an entire day. There is no way that my measly PhD budget would have ever permitted that kind of travel physically! I think that the culture of Twitter allows for some urgency in responses too. Twitter users are far more likely to ‘tweet’ back quickly compared to sending an email or Facebook message for example.
Additionally, the photograph itself provides an entry point into a discussion with participants concerning their personal experience of the place they discovered WiFi and the image often hints at their surroundings. Sometimes these hoptspots are open public spaces that encourage gathering of WiFi users and non-users alike. Other times the web connection is a welcome, albeit unexpected encounter. In either case, my research has been most interested in the immediate surroundings….the physical space the WiFi was being used, the potential space facilitated by access to digital realms, and how these spaces might alter the ways people move about and engage with their urban surroundings.
Access to location coordinates would provide the opportunity for a far more rich set of data. Geographers love maps graphs and all manner of illustration. Location specific data might add another dimension to my understanding of public space. Taking an image of a space that is often out of context….and associating it with a definite point – on a map. Imagine that…I could have some maps in my dissertation!
