The geography of innovation as reflected by social media

Carlo Corradini

Environment and Planning A, 2021, vol. 53, issue 2, 227-229

Abstract: Capturing whether mysteries of trade are ‘in the air’ remains a central issue for understanding the spatial nature of innovative activities. We offer new insights on the intangible dimension of the geography of innovation comparing the spatial distribution of patenting rates and a novel measure of ‘innovative buzz’ from a 9-billion-word corpus based on 900 million geolocated tweets across US counties. We find the use of words connected to innovation and technology to be characterised by significant spatial concentration. The results show the presence of strong bivariate correlation in the spatial clustering between the two elements, pointing to stimulating opportunities in the use of big data from social media for economic geography research.

Keywords: Social Media; geotagged Twitter; geography of innovation; patents; big data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:53:y:2021:i:2:p:227-229

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X20961107

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