Use of Geotagged Social Media in Urban Settings: Empirical Evidence on Its Potential from Twitter

Social media can be valuable in transportation research, as data collected contain information for mobility patterns and behavioural characteristics that could not be previously obtained. This paper introduces a methodology for the collection and analysis of data from Social Media, for transportation-related uses, first in a generic methodological framework and then particularly for Twitter. The data collection methodology is applied using Twitter and some initial descriptive statistics are presented concerning the characteristics of users and their posts. Results from spatial analysis is presented, conducted using data from the geotagged service of Twitter. The results of the analysis present trends on the use of Twitter for leisure activities and a correlation between high income areas and number of tweets posted. Finally, the potential of using data from Social Media is discussed with the issues that arise.