Visualizing the “Pulse” of World Cities on Twitter

Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 7

Volume

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2013): Seventh International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

Poster Papers

We present a large-scale analysis of activity on Twitter in 50 majorcities around the world throughout all of 2012. Our study consists oftwo parts: First, we created heatmap visualizations, through whichperiods of comparatively intense and sparse activity are readilyapparent — these visual patterns reflect diurnal cycles, culturalnorms, and even religious practices. Second, we performed a clusteranalysis of these activity patterns to identify groupings of citiesthat are similar in the ways their inhabitants use Twitter. Notsurprisingly, cities cluster geographically, although we are able toidentify cross-cultural similarities as well.

10.1609/icwsm.v7i1.14463