Spatial applications as social knowledge provider : an approach for regional virtual communities

Existing applications in visualization of blogs and online conversations have largely focused on the discovery of social networks and knowledge flows in the online space. At the same time, another class of visual spatial applications allows us to uncover the relationships between people and real space. This can be used to infer how individual and collective behaviour is not only a function of social contexts but also spatially situated in real physical environments. This paper presents a socio-technical approach and a prototype public tool integrating these two aspects in a synergetic way: (1) using social software to facilitate community forming in specific regional, spatial application scenarios and (2) eliciting new knowledge from community-based interaction processes in spatial settings. The prototypical implementation in a case-study in Upper Austria demonstrates how the developed sociotechnical tool enables new forms of cross-municipal communication and interaction which blend together physical, informational and social dimension of space. -- Social software ; spatial applications ; digital communities ; conversation visualization ; digital cartograph ; collaborative mapping ; cross-municipal communication