Mapping Chinese Diasporic Heritage from Social Media Data with Spatial and Semantic Networks

Diasporic communities and their heritage are vital in shaping cultural diversity in urban planning and management. However, diasporic heritage management overlooked cross-geographical networks that constitute cultural significance. This study develops a workflow to explore diasporic heritage’s spatial and semantic networks. Global social media data about Chinatowns on Flickr is collected and analysed through Named Entity Recognition, and Spatial and Semantic Network Analysis. Findings reveal the diasporic flows based on places frequently recognised as origin and destination of Chinese diasporic heritage, and the distribution of places, zooming in from worldwide to the Netherlands. Semantic networks in different Dutch cities are compared.