Exploring New Workplaces with Social Network Analysis

Over the last twenty years, the structure of the job market has changed due to new technologies and innovations. In this context, new working spaces are emerging such as Coworking spaces,Makerspace and FabLab. This chapter presents an analytical experimentation aimed at evaluating if and how the social and digital connections can be put in relationship with physical spaces. More precisely, social media data related to new working spaces have been analyzed and mapped in order to understand their link with spatial issues like the location of these spaces or the spatial distribution of the followers connected to the accounts of selected physical spaces. This approach tries to highlight howdifferent geographical and relational proximities interact with each other by using the topic of coworking spaces as an observation point. In the currentworld, dominated by online connectivity and social media reality, online milieu cannot be missed. Using an original methodology based on Twitter derived data, the research will analyze the online debate of new working spaces (Coworking Spaces,Maker Spaces, FabLab), the networks of their related accounts, the user communities and their features compared to the reality. By performing a social network analysis with Gephi using DMI-TCAT software and geo-localizing the followers of 11 case studies, the research will demonstrate the importance of the virtual world created by the online social platforms and the proximity of the web communities with the actual location of the new working spaces.