Social Media and Social Awareness

Abstract

AbstractThe human behaviors and interactions on social media have maintained themselves as highly dynamic real-time social systems representing individual social awareness at fine spatial, temporal, and digital resolutions. In this chapter, we introduce the opportunities and challenges that human dynamics-centered social media bring to Digital Earth. We review the information diffusion of social media, the multi-faced implications of social media, and some real-world cases. Social media, on one hand, has facilitated the prediction of human dynamics in a wide spectrum of aspects, including public health, emergency response, decision making, and social equity promotion, and will also bring unintended challenges for Digital Earth, such as rumors and location spoofing on the other. Considering the multifaceted implications, this chapter calls for GIScientists to raise their awareness of the complex impacts of social media, to model the geographies of social media, and to understand ourselves as a unique species living both on the Earth and in Digital Earth.