Geospatial analysis of toponyms in geotagged social media posts
Place names, or toponyms, play an integral role in human representation and communication of geographic space. In particular, how people relate each toponym with particular locations in geographic space should be indicative of their spatial perception. Here, we make use of an extensive dataset of ge...
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| Main Authors | , , |
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| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
04.10.2024
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Place names, or toponyms, play an integral role in human representation and
communication of geographic space. In particular, how people relate each
toponym with particular locations in geographic space should be indicative of
their spatial perception. Here, we make use of an extensive dataset of
georeferenced social media posts, retreived from Twitter, to perform a
statistical analysis of the geographic distribution of toponyms and uncover the
relationship between toponyms and geographic space. We show that the occurrence
of toponyms is characterized by spatial inhomogeneity, giving rise to patterns
that are distinct from the distribution of common nouns. Using simple models,
we quantify the spatial specificity of toponym distributions and identify their
core-periphery structures. In particular, we find that toponyms are used with a
probability that decays as a power law with distance from the geographic center
of their occurrence. Our findings highlight the potential of social media data
to explore linguistic patterns in geographic space, paving the way for
comprehensive analyses of human spatial representations. |
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| DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2410.03250 |