“I need some space!” deciphering space tourism discussions on social media
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-09-2021-0148 |
| Published date | 20 January 2022 |
| Date | 20 January 2022 |
| Pages | 424-436 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information in society,Information literacy,Library & information services |
| Author | Shruti Gulati |
“I need some space!”deciphering
space tourism discussions on
social media
Shruti Gulati
Department of Commerce, Delhi School of Economics,
University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
Abstract
Purpose –Space tourism is fairly neglected in academicresearch and requires further exploration. Public
reaction on socialmedia offers great insights to understand the patterns of behaviour but is often ignored as a
potential data source. Thus, this study aimsto fill the gap by add to the literature on space tourism, social
media analyticsand behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach –The study adopts a qualitativeapproach and uses Twitter data for
drawing conclusions. An exploratory design is used by analysing 10,000 tweets through unsupervised
machine learning and twosets of analysis were conducted. First, sentiment analysis is performedusing NRC
Emotion Lexicon, whichclassifies the data as per eight basic emotions and polarity as positive and negative.
The findings arecomplemented with a comparison cloud. Second,LDA Topic modelling using Gibbs Method
is used to find ten broad topics that are used for discussions in space tourism tweets. Data visualisation
techniqueis used to depict results using R language on RStudio.
Findings –A total of 21,784 emotions have tapped using the NRC Emotion Lexicon.Results indicate the
dominance of positive sentiments(25%) with it surpassing the negative sentiments by many folds. The top
emotions include trust and anticipation. The LDA-based Topic modelling identified seven correlated topic
models that have been groupedby theauthor as space tourism in media, aspirations, ethical issues, criticism,
descriptive,symbolism and miscellaneous.
Originality/value –To the best of the author’s knowledge,no study has attempted to study the response
of space tourism on social media by tapping discussions in the form of Tweets. Thus, this study adds
extensivelyand acts as a preliminary investigation on the public sentimentsof space tourism on social media.
Keywords Space, Tourism, Social media, Twitter, Sentiment analysis, Topic modelling, R
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Space tourism has come a long way from conceptualisation to now its reality with few people
actually experiencing the outer space in a form of leisure tourism. These space travelers are
limited in number who have actually experienced “tourism beyond known horizons”(Forganni,
2017). The year 2021 has been able to highlight itself in the history of space tourism with
billionaire Richard Branson embarking his journey as a space tourist with his space company
Virgin Galactic, followed by Jeff Bezos in his Blue Origin. Several others are already in line and
planning to do the same. Space tourism has been attracting a lot of attention with famous
businessmen globally investing in space ventures such as Jeff Bezoz’sBlueOrigin,Richard
Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk Space X soon making it a popular marketplace for
tourism. But many questions have also been raised on space tourism. A lot of criticism is
attributed to the elitist nature of the space tourism domain (Forganni, 2017), making many
wonder if it is still stuck in a “billionaire phase”. Contrarily, there are concerns of non-fatal
experiences that often restrict space tourism to open up to the masses (Roulette, 2021).
GKMC
72,4/5
424
Received9 September 2021
Revised24 November 2021
Accepted15 December 2021
GlobalKnowledge, Memory and
Communication
Vol.72 No. 4/5, 2023
pp. 424-436
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9342
DOI 10.1108/GKMC-09-2021-0148
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