The new town square: Twitter discourses about balconies during the 2020 lockdown in Spain Mesa Pedrazas, Ángela Nogueras Zondag, Roberto Duque Calvache, Ricardo Social Media Public Space Liminal spaces COVID-19 Natural language processing Topic modelling This work is part of the results of the Research Project ‘Multi-methodological Approach to Residential Behaviour and Everyday Life (MARBEL)’, code PID2020.119569GA.I00 funded by MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033, and had financial support from the Project MOVICRA (P20_00571), funded by Consejería de Universidad, Investigación e Innovación de la Junta de Andalucía, and by FEDER “Una manera de hacer Europa”. The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in Spain during Spring 2020 resulted in a ban on most uses of public space, producing a social redefinition of not only public spaces, but also private spaces such as homes. This paper examines the discourses related to balconies that appeared at this time on Twitter (X), an intermediate microspace and hybrid between the public and private. The study uses data from tweets posted in Spain during the strictest phase of the lockdown (from 15 March to 1 May 2020). Based on a descriptive analytical approach – both quantitative and textual – the study applies text content analysis and natural language processing to identify and analyse the main topics of conversation related to the use of balconies. The study brought to light two primary and complementary results. Firstly, the balcony during the pandemic became a revitalized space in an exceptional situation, partially adapting to the most common practices characteristic of public space and thus reaffirming the importance of the existence of public spaces for citizen encounters. Secondly, the various uses of balconies received different types of attention and generated stronger or weaker interactions on social networks, demonstrating the complexity and diversity of relationships with public spaces. 2024-01-09T11:11:46Z 2024-01-09T11:11:46Z 2023-12 journal article Mesa-Pedrazas, Á., Nogueras-Zondag, R., & Duque-Calvache, R. (2023). The new town square: Twitter discourses about balconies during the 2020 lockdown in Spain. Cities, 143, 104595. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2023.104595] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/86652 10.1016/j.cities.2023.104595 eng open access Elsevier