Mapper Eric Fischer has created the most detailed tweet map ever. Six billion tweets over 3.5 years – worldwide:
What does the map look like closer to home? Zoom in here and look around:
Zoomed out, it looks like a population density map. Like a census map but with a bias toward showing population segments more likely to be engaged with social media:
Zooming in, we see other patterns and try to understand their meaning. Near Denton, the local hotspots for tweeters are North Caroline High School (upper left) and McDonald’s near MD 404 (lower right). The NCHS hotspot is easy to interprist: a population more likely to be active in social media:
But why are tweets coming from farm fields? Tractor and harvester operators are tweeting while they plow furrows or harvest soybeans?
And why are all these tweets coming from the middle of the Choptank River and from the marshes north of Denton and the MD 404 bridge? Waterfowl hunters? Seems unlikely. Bad geolocations in the Twitter data are always possible. But why scattered here?
And, of course, you have to wonder about all those tweets along Routes 404 and 50. Those just passengers tweeting, right? Can’t be drivers !
Got ideas? Write to me: cartographer @
choptankriverheritage.
org