The construction of expressive space: exploring the relationship between social media expression and the spatial practices of heritage towns

The rise of social media has reshaped how people perceive and engage with cultural heritage spaces. This study examines the impact of social media expressions on the spatial practices and evolution of heritage towns in China. Taking three historic towns as cases, the research integrates Weibo User-generated Content (UGC) with Point of Interest (POI) data to examine the spatial correspondence, thematic structures, and predictive potential of digital expressions. Combining spatial matching, BERTopic-based image topic modeling, and logistic regression, the study identifies three findings. First, social media expressions form a platform-mediated expressive space that diverges from official POI distributions, revealing an uneven reconfiguration of spatial visibility and heritage boundaries. Second, while social expressions across historic towns exhibit synchronized rhythms shaped by national festivals, they also display significant local differentiation reflecting cultural and governance models. Third, the concentration of thematic expressions and the influence of opinion leaders significantly increase the potential of spatial renewal, implying that digital expression may serve as an indicative signal of potential physical transformation. These findings highlight a shift from institutionally defined representations of heritage space toward platform-mediated expressive spaces, suggesting that social expressions can serve as dynamic indicators for micro-renewal and cultural planning in historic towns.