Faculty and graduate students travel to AAG Annual Meeting for research presentations

April 20, 2018

From April 10-14, 2018, six graduate students and three faculty members traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana for the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting. Drs. Andrei Kirilenko, Svetlana Stepchenkova, and Jin-Won Kim presented on a variety of topics spanning a series of sessions.

The first session was presented by Dr. Kirilenko and graduate students, Shihan Ma and Jihee Park. They spoke about their research on the multi-platform social media analysis conducted of the visitors to Lake Texoma, located at the Oklahoma–Texas border. They discussed the differences in data streams collected from four popular SNS: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

The next session, titled “Exploring the Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Visitor Flows in Seoraksan National Park using GPS-based Smart Phone Application,” was presented by Dr. Jin-Won Kim, Dr. Brijesh Thapa, and graduate student Eunjun Yang. In this study, they explore the spatio-temporal patterns of visitor flows at Seoraksan National Park in South Korea. GIS mapping in combination with spatial data analysis were employed to explore the spatial and temporal patterns of visitor flows within the park.

The next presentation in this session, titled “Moderating Role of Geospatial Proximity on Public Crisis Involvement: A Case Study of “Women Attacked in Yitel” on Sina Weibo,” was from Dr. Svetlana Stepchenkova and graduate student Lijuan Su. In this study, they aimed to examine the spatial variations between public’s involvement and socio-economic variables on the city scale. The study sampled 10,245 messages with the hashtag “woman attacked in Yitel hotel” from Sina Weibo. The findings indicated geographic proximity affected spatial distribution patterns of involvement.

The next presentation in the session was from Luyu Wang with support from Dr. Angélica Almeyda Zambrano (did not attend). This study examined one of the most popular and most reviewed natural protected areas in the United States, the Grand Canyon National Park. This study investigates the sentiment changing pattern over months, comparing sentiment scores with the number of tweets.

The next day, the faculty and students participated in a session titled “Revisiting Tourism in Sustainable Development.” In this session, graduate student Pamela Montero-Alvarez presented her results from her analysis of a community-based tourism association located in the buffer zone of the Tamshiyacu - Tahuayo Communal Regional Conservation Area, in the Peruvian Amazon. The research aimed to analyze the role of communal rural sustainable tourism in Protected Area conservation.