(1) Background: The importance of sport in advancing the roadmap for the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda was reaffirmed at the 7th Summit on Smart Cities and Sport (Lausanne, 26–28 October 2020), where it was emphasized that developing a culture of sustainability among younger generations is crucial. Given this scenario, the present study focuses on two main research questions: “Is there a diffusion of an environmentally oriented culture among university students?” and “Is there a relationship between sports’ world and environmentally oriented culture?” (2) Methods: To establish the empirical framework (279 questionnaires received), we used web-based survey techniques with a Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI) procedure. (3) Results: The analysis results show that the sample considers environmental sustainability as a part of a more comprehensive understanding of sustainability, which reflects a sense of fear for uncertainty in the future. The second finding suggests that sport does not play a significant role in shaping awareness. (4) Conclusions: The cultural and generational background must be considered for better understanding of the research results, especially in Italy where it appears that sustainability is not considered a priority.

The growing masses of digital traces generated by the datafication process make the algorithms that manage them increasingly central to contemporary society.There is widespread agreement in considering traces and algorithms as complex objects that intertwine social and material practices with their own cultural, historical, and institutional nature (Halford et al., 2010).Accordingly, given this strong intertwining between the social world and the digital world that is formed by material and technological objects, it becomes possible to consider the algorithms and traces as socio-digital objects. For this reason, this article aims to identify the features that allow us to frame them as socio-digital objects starting from concepts borrowed from the actor-network theory (Latour and Woolgar 1879). In particular, we will first discuss opacity, authority and autonomy concepts and then see how those features emerge in digital geographical traces.

In the context of smart cities, people and places get connected by means of sophisticated technologies, tools, and applications, such as data mining, machine learning, big data, and the Internet of Things. The term smart city, which includes related issues such as smart well-being, smart transit, and smart society, has attracted considerable attention in the academia and policymaking due to its impact on people’s quality of life. The development of various models like forecast, preparation, and monitoring in smart cities has been enhanced by deep learning and machine learning techniques for urban development. In self-driving cars, traffic lights and traffic control systems, systems to support the management of energy distribution, and water – in sum, wherever there will be large masses of information to be managed – there is an opportunity to develop algorithms to handle it. Although presented as objective tools, algorithms are to be regarded as sociotechnical devices that incorporate the perspectives of the authors involved in their creation. Thus, mentioning “algorithmic risk” is important to highlight the potentially harmful consequences – intentional or unintentional – that algorithms can generate for individuals and societies in smart cities. The objective of this chapter is to examine a possible hypothetical “geo-discrimination risk”, an issue that might transform smart cities in places where opportunities and possibilities are not evenly distributed. The findings of this research suggest that the unquestioning integration of algorithms in the urban development of smart cities has the potential to affect both the physical urban environment and the lives of individuals, leading to the emergence of geo-discrimination at both these distinct levels. Accordingly, this work may inform future research in this area and support policymakers in developing and managing smart cities. <!----> <!----> <!----> <!---->

Related to the first period of the COVID-19 pandemic (March-June 2020), some recent studies on the application of content analysis of geolocalized tweets (Bashar et alii 2020, Punziano et alii 2020) have demonstrated the negative relation between the Coronavirus spread (with Northern Italy most affected) and the polarity of social narratives about the pandemic. In brief, the «resilient» social narrative of the most impacted regions has corresponded to a negative and worried emergency narrative of the less affected regions. In relation to epidemiological data, the second phase of the pandemic (also referred to as the «second wave», in autumn 2020) has been very different from the first (ISSa 2020). The severity of emergency, without considering questions about the reliability of the first wave data (Istat 2020a), has been more relevant and homogeneous across Italy. The study questions whether there are differences between the geography of contagion and that of the narrative. Given the increasingly homogeneous spread of the virus, the assumption has been that the digital arena also has ended up showing a narrative more united on negative sentiments. The issue is addressed by analyzing a corpus of geolocalized tweets, extracted in the period from the new October lockdown to the partial and fragmented pre-Christmas reopenings in 2020. Following the application of a model combining text mining and GIS analysis, the most recurrent themes in social discourse on Twitter were mapped. This geography of emerging social narratives (COVID-Issues) compared with the geography of contagion spread (COVID-Spread) and the norms (COVID-Measures) allowed to detect the trend in the relationship of these three dimensions during the second emergence from COVID-19.

In the era of data revolution, new types of data and data sources allow researchers to find innovative ways to study society and its dynamics. The concept of neighbourhood effects (NE) was born within the sociological debate on the relationship between territory and social phenomena inaugurated by Durkheim and continued by other authors from many disciplines. NE is a particular concept that is borne more by empirical evidence than theory. This aspect is quite problematic because it is easy to find studies that investigate how spatial characteristics influence social phenomena; however, there is no agreement on the ways in which spatial influence manifests itself or on which spatial elements have a sociological bearing. Initially absent in Internet studies, NE have been progressively investigated owing to the geo-media. Crowdsourced Geographic Information has made it possible to jointly analyze two dimensions previously considered incompatible, such as the online and offline worlds. The purpose of this study is twofold. The first objective is to analyze how the discourse on NE is evolving in digital studies that use crowdsourced Geographic Information. The second objective is to identify the critical elements of this approach. In particular, we will try to give the reader the answer to the following questions: What kind of geo-media has been used? Which topics do NE research focus on? What are the hypothesized mechanisms that link space and social phenomena? What are the most frequently used approaches for this purpose? A systematic literature review was used to answer these questions.