Finding a City’s Activity Bubbles in Geotagged Social Media

Bill Bishop popularized the idea that we all live in a self-curated world of bubbles in his book, “The Big Sort” (Bishop 2009). People often spend most of their time in completely different places from their neighbors, and this fragmentation of society leads to reduced empathy, policy quarrels, and even violence. People may not even be aware that they are segregating themselves so dramatically. Fortunately, thanks to the abundance of available geotagged social media data, we can easily and cheaply detect these social bubbles and give people a greater insight into their activity patterns. Understanding how we spend our time can be the first step in changing from isolated citizens into a connected community.