Does Tobler’s first law of geography apply to internet attention? A case study of the Asian elephant northern migration event

One of the basic assumptions of spatial theory is formulated in Waldo Tobler’s first law of geography: "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." However, as internet space is a complex virtual space independent of the real world, whether this law is applicable to things in the internet space remains to be explored in depth. Therefore, this study takes the event of Asian elephant northern migration as an example, attempts to investigate the issue of the applicability of Tobler’s first law of geography to internet attention by integrating geographic methods such as spatial visualization, spatial correlation analysis, and Geo-detector. The results show that Tobler’s first law of geography does not fully apply to internet attention, which does not decay with increasing distance. Geographical distance, within certain boundaries, is influenced by "identity" and "relevance", and still plays a large role in internet attention. However, once the boundaries are exceeded, the impact of geographic distance on internet attention is weakened by the intervention of influencing factors such as the degree of information technology, population, and the strength of news media publicity. Overall, the strength of news media publicity has the greatest impact on internet attention. And when it interacts with geographic proximity, it has the most significant effect on internet attention.