Online Methods
Mixed qualitative and quantitative data-intensive approaches were taken to the analysis as appropriate to the data. For the online research, data-intensive topic modelling, term frequencies and associations, sentiment and cluster analysis was conducted, alongside close reading and qualitative discourses analysis of select examples.
The sections below provide an introduction to individual methods, explaining what they involve, why you might use them, and how they can be used.
For details about the online methods and the results achieved with their application on the Deep Cities case studies, please have a look at the PRACTICAL EXAMPLE section (Woolwich, Canongate, San Donato). Furthermore you can find the case studies reports in the Participatory Methods RESOURCES page.
Social Media Analysis Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, Flickr
Social Media Analysis is a method to identify and investigate people’s interactions with the urban area.
The first important step is mapping the presence of references to the selected urban area on social media platforms, detailing location and content available. This mapping is also very useful for dissemination purposes, see Crowdsourcing and Survey section.
After the mapping, it is necessary to select the sites for the analysis, based on data access restrictions, research time constraints and content type relevance to the case study. We suggest focusing only on sub-environments of these sites where content is posted publicly and people posting have a reasonable expectation to be observed or read by strangers, such as public Facebook Pages for Facebook.
The data can be retrevied from social media manually or in an automated way using the R Free Software (a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics), then analysed with a mixed qualitative and quantitative data-intensive approach.
- Quantitative analysis - textual contents can be analysed quantitatively through Text Mining, a series of analysis - such as topic modelling, term frequencies and associations, sentiment and cluster analysis - that consents to examine large collections of data, capturing key concepts, trends, and highlighting hidden information and relations. This can be performed with R Free Software using a wide range of packages.
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Qualitative analysis - close reading and qualitative discourses analysis of select textual data and images.
For the research related to the UK Deep Cities Case studies, Canongate and Woolwich, the platforms selected for the analysis wereTwitter, Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, Flickr. Material and R codes to perform the same analysis can be found in the RESOURCES section.
Some R plots of Flickr Analysis on Woolwich and Canongate Deep Cities case studies ©University of Stirling
Crowdsourcing MicroPasts, EpiCollect5
According to recent studies on participatory urban planning, the crowdsourcing method seemed to be a suitable tool to unveil what values the citizens associate with the urban environment they interact with. Crowdsourcing implies a crowd, in this case an urban one, and the accomplishment of a task to solve a problem, here understanding what heritage preserve through time. To solve this, it is important to gather not just the stakeholders' views but also the non-expert local knowledge, bridging the gap between planners and citizens.
The main objectives for the Deep Cities project's crowdsourcing were creating some apps able to collect these values and local knowledge, as place-based memories, related to an urban area, and to enhance participation in the co-design of the urban space. Furthermore, we aimed to:
- encourage an intergenerational use of the apps;
- engage young people in urban planning;
- measure the impact of urban changes on urban communities (collecting also both positive and negative opinions);
- assessing people's awareness of case studies' history and heritage.
NB The crowdsourcing apps developed for this project can be considered as Participatory Mapping; this method can also take place offline. See here
We developed the following apps:
This app complements the social media research and enables the ad hoc collection of local residents’ values and views relating to the selected urban area. It loaded a map of the area, and asked users to add a marker on a place or building significant to them. Furthermore, it invited users to explain why the place marked was considered significant, for example by sharing a memory or a story.
Based on the public participation GIS practice, we decided to collect geo-located data. The addition of a map might, in fact, make the task more interactive and help to offer more detailed and accurate data also for stakeholders. We would like in fact to collect data that the decision makers can actually use, a tangible collection of people's valuable heritage to possibly compare with stakeholders' viewpoints. We suggest distributing the survey to potential participants through suitable social media environments identified in the mapping.
This app has been developed on the crowdsourcing platform MicroPasts
For further details and learn how to develop this app for your research, go to RESOURCES section.
Your City, Your Place App interface ©University of Stirling
This app enables the collection of young people's values and views relating to the selected urban area. The mobile app invites the young people to take pictures of buildings and places significant to them and located while exploring the case study area. It asks them to save the coordinates and then to associate thoughts, impressions, and feelings about the subject they shot. In our research we discussed the app results with the participants in an ad hoc workshop, also involved them in a co-design activity "What would you do with this urban space?".
Young people are one of the groups that remain largely anonymous, invisible, from heritage conservation policy and practice, despite decisions about the urban environment might affect their lives. They scarcely exercise an active citizenship in terms of making their voices and values heard, because they are considered not able to take decisions in this matter, where, quite the opposite, their everyday experiencing and perceptions of historic spaces give them a form of expertise. Not considering their views risks bringing towards a lack of sense of identity construction and representation, place-making, community and belonging, and a lack of sense of responsibility towards the heritage.
This app has been developed on the crowdsourcing platform EpiCollect5 for a this project in collaboration with YoungScot.
For further details and learn how to develop this app for your research, go to RESOURCES section.
Some results of the app and the interactive board of the co-design activity during the workshop ©University of Stirling
Online Questionnaire Survey, Google Forms
An anonymous online survey can be useful to investigate heritage values associated with the case study in greater depth while also acquiring information that could help to contextualise the social media data previously collected and analysed. We suggest distributing the survey to potential participants through suitable social media environments identified in the mapping. Descriptive statistics can be produced using answers from close questions, whereas answers to open questions need to be analysed qualitatively.
The Deep Cities online survey comprised 16 open and close questions on social media use, values associated with the site and the wider urban area, and demographic data (about 5–10-minute completion). .
The Deep Cities online survey was developed on Google Forms.
Deep Cities Survey ©University of Stirling
Last update
09.01.2023