Social media: Tool to study humans in nature

People living in cities interact freely with nature in very few urban settings. Urban green spaces remain as the few areas in which such interactions can take place. Different groups of people use these urban green spaces in varying ways. Understanding this varied recreational usage is crucial for the better management and planning of public green spaces.

In a new study, researchers used data gathered from over 250,000 photographs from social media platform Flickr to analyse the behavioural patterns of people who visited urban parks in the tropical garden city of Singapore. The research was led by Song Xiao Ping, a researcher at the Ecosystem Services in Urban Landscapes project under the Future Cities Laboratory as well as Dr Daniel R. Richards, Principal Investigator of Natural Capital Singapore, and Dr Tan Puay Yok, Programme Director for the Master of Land Architecture Programme.
 

Data Obtained from Social Media

Social media is a useful tool to gather information about users’ interests, areas they have visited, aesthetic values, emotional attachment and mood at the particular instance. It is also handy in assessing the popularity of various urban parks with respect to tourists and locals. The nationality of users was determined through examining the countries listed on their profiles and also by selecting the country at which most of their randomly sampled photographs were taken. Photographs examined were not just restricted to those uploaded by users. Favourited photographs were included as well.

There are defined distinctions in the quantity and types of photographs taken by tourists and locals at the urban parks. The different groups of park goers were also geographically analysed and observed to have varied preferences in the parks they chose to visit.

The article "external pageUsing social media user attributes to understand human–environment interactions at urban parkscall_made" is published in Scientific Reports.