On spatial variation in the detectability and density of social media user protest supporters
This research addresses the problem of understanding spatial patterns in social media protest data for social scientists and urban planners, though it is incremental in applying existing spatial methods to this domain.
The study tackled the problem of characterizing social media users' spatial behavior during protests by analyzing how built environment, proximity to protest location, and collective posting rhythm affect detectability and density of protest supporters in Mexico City. The results showed high variability in detectability, with collective posting rhythm and observation day being significant explanatory factors, while physical proximity was inadequate.
Although much has been published regarding street protests on social media, few works have attempted to characterize social media users' spatial behavior in such events. The research reported here uses spatial capture-recapture methods to determine the influence of the built environment, physical proximity to protest location, and collective posting rhythm on variations in users' spatial detectability and density during a protest in Mexico City. The best-obtained model, together with explaining the spatial density of users, shows that there is high variability in the detectability of social media user protest supporters and that the collective posting rhythm and the day of observation are significant explanatory factors. The implication is that studies of collective spatial behavior would benefit by focussing on users' activity centres and their urban environment, rather than their physical proximity to the protest location, the latter being unable to adequately explain spatial variations in users' detectability and density during the protest event.