Platial or Locational Data? Toward the Characterization of Social Location Sharing

Sharing "location" information on social media became commonplace since the advent of smartphones. Location-based social networks introduced a derivative form of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) known as Social Location Sharing (SLS). It consists of claiming "I am/was at that Place". Since SLS represents a singular form of place-based (i.e. Platial) communication, we argue that SLS data are more platial than locational. According to our data classification of VGI, locational data (e.g. A geotagged tweet which geographic dimension is limited to its coordinate information) are a reduced form of platial data (e.g. A Swarm check-in). Therefore, we believe these two kinds of data should not be analyzed on the same spatial level. This distinction needs to be clarified because a large part of geosocial data (i.e. Spatial data published from social media) tends to be analyzed on the basis of a locational equivalence and not on a platial one.