Social media and GIScience: Collection, analysis, and visualization of user-generated spatial data

Over the last decade, social media platforms have eclipsed the height of popular culture and communication technology, which, in combination with widespread access to GIS-enabled hardware (i.e. mobile phones), has resulted in the continuous creation of massive amounts of user-generated spatial data. This thesis explores how social media data have been utilized in GIS research and provides a commentary on the impacts of this next iteration of technological change with respect to GIScience. First, the roots of GIS technology are traced to set the stage for the examination of social media as a technological catalyst for change in GIScience. Next, a scoping review is conducted to gather and synthesize a summary of methods used to collect, analyze, and visualize this data. Finally, a case study exploring the spatio-temporality of crowdfunding behaviours in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic is presented to demonstrate the utility of social media data in spatial research

THE LOOPER CO-CREATION METHODOLOGY: ENHANCING URBAN TRANSFORMATION THROUGH PARTICIPATORY SENSING AND URBAN LIVING LABS IN LEARNING LOOPS

My research aims to test how the participatory co-creation methodology can help to solve different urban issues, and wants to show some practicalities to organisers about how to set up a Urban Living Lab to involve stakeholders in a co-creation process. This research involved both the study of the state of the art, but also some practical work to experience which are the positive results and found criticalities. The study of the state of the art gave me a more complete comprehension of the situation in which my research is framed, and it included: the Scandinavian \u2018cooperative design\u2019 in the \u201860s; De Carlo participatory design of the Terni project; the concept of \u2018Participatory design\u2019 in the USA during the \u201870s; Siza and the SAAL process in the \u201870s; the \u2018User-centred design\u2019 concept by Donald Dorman in the \u201880s; the idea of \u2018Participatory budgeting\u2019 in Portugal from the 2000 on. The methodology has been that of \u2018practice-led\u2019. In my work, I applied the co-creation methodology in different urban environments to: check which practices can be considered good or bad; cross data collected from the state of the art and the field research; compare collected data. The research I have done focused on an European Research Project, funded under the JPI Urban Europe, called LOOPER (Learning Loops in the Public Realm) which applies the learning loop to the co-design process. A comparison background case was used as well: the planning of the City of Sports in San Don\ue0 di Piave (Italy). This research has the ambition of creating a new way of decision-making which brings together all stakeholders, including policymakers, that iteratively learn how to address urban challenges. This then results in an implemented co-design process since stakeholders in the end are called to evaluate what they have done. Future implementations of my research would allow the creation of a complete set of guidelines that can be used to solve different urban issues, by triggering the co-creation methodology applied within Urban Living Labs