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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Wen Lin
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
The recent explosive growth of user-generated geographic information has drawn significant attention from GIS scholars and human geographers. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) here refers to a key component of such a phenomenon, comprising both a range of practices of geographic information production and dissemination by volunteers as well as new forms of geospatial data produced and curated through various interactive online platforms and mobile devices such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Google Maps. VGI constructions have raised questions on spatial knowledge, power, and context. Through a study that examines social constructions of OSM in China, this paper makes two contributions to the existing literature: providing a political economic account of VGI constructions in China and exploring legalities in VGI research. Informed by research in critical GIS, this paper traces political economic conditions in relation to OSM constructions and examines OSM contributors’ experiences and how these experiences constitute OSM development and usage. Drawing upon law and society research, this paper investigates how OSM mappers encounter the state’s regulatory scheme of online mapping. This legality perspective of spatial data production and usage is a topic rarely explored in VGI studies. With interview data and document analysis, this paper unravels processes of powerful state institutional arrangements to control and invest in VGI simultaneously, entrepreneurs’ interest in developing location-based services using VGI data, and experiences from a tech-savvy group in exploring and making VGI. While individual experiences vary, they show efforts of questioning embedded power relations shaping spatial data production in these continuously evolving, contested technoscientific and social landscapes.
Author(s): Lin W
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Geoforum
Year: 2018
Volume: 89
Pages: 73-82
Print publication date: 01/02/2018
Online publication date: 03/02/2018
Acceptance date: 08/01/2018
Date deposited: 08/01/2018
ISSN (print): 0016-7185
ISSN (electronic): 1872-9398
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.01.005
DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.01.005
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