Dr Andrea Ballatore was invited to discuss his research at the University of Zurich
Dr Andrea Ballatore was invited to discuss his research at the University of Zurich on the 28th of March:
From digital space to digital place: Exploring geographic information through similarity, emotion, and localness
The deluge of big spatial data can provide new lenses through which look at the geographic concept of place in its many facets. This seminar will cover three research directions at the nexus of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and geographic information retrieval. (i) Places are characterised by the co-occurrence of entities and events in recurring patterns. Similarity search in this large multi-dimensional space can support exploration of geographic data, and the assessment of causality relations. (ii) Big data produced about places have a strong affective dimension. Detecting emotions in user-generated content, such as travel blogs, can illuminate regularities, biases, and anomalies in how places are experienced by individuals. (iii) Search engines give us representations of places at a fingertip, for example when we search “Zurich” on Google. Important questions about these digital representations of place emerge: To what degree is this information locally produced and diverse? Which countries are producing their own representations and which are represented by others? What are the global patterns and divides in these search geographies?