Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Comment
  • Published:

Understanding the removal of precise geotagging in tweets

Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 1219–1221 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Twitter announced on 18 June 2019 that it would remove the precise geotagging feature in tweets. In addition to protecting the location privacy of users, this change also affects human behaviour studies based on geotagged tweets. We discuss the potential impact of Twitter’s decision and how researchers can respond to this change.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: The three remaining approaches of geotagging after Twitter’s decision.

References

  1. Huang, B. & Carley, K.M. in Proc. of Int. Conf. on Adv. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. (eds Spezzano, F., Chen, W. & Xiao, X.) 365–373 (IEEE/ACM, 2019).

  2. Crooks, A., Croitoru, A., Stefanidis, A. & Radzikowski, J. Trans. GIS 17, 124–147 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Padmanabhan, A. et al. Concurr. Comput. 26, 2253–2265 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Rashidi, T. H., Abbasi, A., Maghrebi, M., Hasan, S. & Waller, T. S. Transp. Res., Part C Emerg. Technol. 75, 197–211 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Hobbs, W. & Lajevardi, N. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 113, 270–276 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Dahal, B., Kumar, S. A. & Li, Z. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 9, 24 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Sloan, L. et al. Sociol. Res. Online 18, 74–84 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Keßler, C. & McKenzie, G. Trans. GIS 22, 3–19 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Phillips, N.E., Levy, B.L., Sampson, R.J., Small, M.L. & Wang, R.Q. Socio. Meth. Res. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124119852386 (2019).

  10. Wallgrün, J. O., Karimzadeh, M., MacEachren, A. M. & Pezanowski, S. Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci. 32, 1–29 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Yingjie Hu

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Ruo-Qian Wang

Authors
  1. Yingjie Hu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ruo-Qian Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yingjie Hu.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hu, Y., Wang, RQ. Understanding the removal of precise geotagging in tweets. Nat Hum Behav 4, 1219–1221 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00949-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00949-x

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing