Extracting locations from sport and exercise-related social media messages using a neural network-based bilingual toponym recognition model

Sport and exercise contribute to health and well-being in cities. While previous research has mainly focused on activities at specific locations such as sport facilities, "informal sport" that occur at arbitrary locations across the city have been largely neglected. Such activities are more challenging to observe, but this challenge may be addressed using data collected from social media platforms, because social media users regularly generate content related to sports and exercise at given locations. This allows studying all sport, including those "informal sport" which are at arbitrary locations, to better understand sports and exercise-related activities in cities. However, user-generated geographical information available on social media platforms is becoming scarcer and coarser. This places increased emphasis on extracting location information from free-form text content on social media, which is complicated by multilingualism and informal language. To support this effort, this article presents an end-to-end deep learning-based bilingual toponym recognition model for extracting location information from social media content related to sports and exercise. We show that our approach outperforms five state-of-the-art deep learning and machine learning models. We further demonstrate how our model can be deployed in a geoparsing framework to support city planners in promoting healthy and active lifestyles.Peer reviewe

Policy brief: Liikunnan harrastamisen esteitä tulisi poistaa lähiöissä (3/2023)

Non peer reviewe

Indeksi liikuntaympäristöjen monipuolisuudesta asukkaiden lähialueella

Peer reviewe

Closed due to COVID-19 : Effects of indoor sports restrictions on suburban adults’ physical activity behaviours

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been required adaptations in leisure-time physical activity (PA) especially due to restrictive policies concerning indoor sport facilities (ISF). This study investigated the effects of the constraints on ISF among residents of two low socioeconomic status suburbs in Finland. Research questions were: (1) Are sociodemographic characteristics associated with a reduced use of ISF during the pandemic? (2) Are sociodemographic characteristics associated with changes in the overall PA amount among those respondents with a reduced use of ISF? (3) Is the reduced use of ISF associated with an increased use of other PA environments (home environment, built outdoor facilities, unbuilt nature, and streets)? Three rounds of survey data (December 2020, February 2021, and June 2021) were collected (total n = 738) and analysed using descriptive statistics and binary and multinomial logistic regressions. A risk of reduced use of ISF was associated with the female gender, higher education, and higher reported PA level. Among those who had reduced their use of ISF, a decrease in overall PA was associated with the female gender and a non-native language. In general, PA declined, but indoor PA was often replaced through other environments. The constraints on ISF seem to not have intensified the socioeconomic polarisation of PA. Versatile PA environments available in the suburbs may have mitigated the negative effects. Public sport administration should continue to pay attention to the provision of diverse PA environments.Peer reviewe