• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.376-387
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• 2017

This paper attempts to analyze the geographical characters of Twitter data and presents analysis potentials for social network analysis in geography. First, this paper suggests a methodology for a topic modeling-based approach in order to identify the geographical characteristics of tweets, including an analysis flow of Twitter data sets, tweet data collection and conversion, textural pre-processing and structural analysis, topic discovery, and interpretation of tweets' topics. GPS coordinates referencing tweets(geotweets) were extracted among sampled Twitter data sets because it contains the tweet place where it was created. This paper identifies a correlated relationship between some specific topics and local places in Jeju. This correlation is closely associated with some place names and local sites in Jeju Island. We assume it is the intention of tweeters to record their tweet places and to share and retweet with other tweeters in some cases. A surface density map shows the hotspots of tweets, detecting around some specific places and sites such as Jeju airport, sightseeing sites, and local places in Jeju Island. The hotspots show similar patterns of the floating population of Jeju, especially the thirty-year age group. In addition, a topic modeling algorithm is applied for the geographical topic discovery and comparison of the spatial patterns of tweets. Finally, this empirical analysis presents that Twitter data, as social network data, provide geographical significance, with topic modeling approach being useful in analyzing the textural features reflecting the geographical characteristics in large data sets of tweets.