What do urban planning experts learn from photos in Instagram? How does data derived from social networks help bring people together? These and other questions are researched by Damiano Cerrone, the co-founder and content-manager of Spin Unit - a transnational research team that works at the confluence of such fields as Urban Science and Art&Science. Last weekend, he gave a lecture for ITMO University's section at the popular science conference Parsec-2017. In an interview for ITMO.NEWS, Mr. Cerrone explained how scientists derive large amounts of data from social networks, why one can't fully trust information from Instagram and what is there to learn from studying St. Petersburg's metamorphology.
You research social media, Instagram included. Please tell us, what is your work about?