Daniel Sui & Michael Goodchild
Email: sui.10@osu.edu
International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 25:11, 1737-1748, DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2011.604636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13658816.2011.604636
It is hard to believe that 10 years have passed since we wrote our guest editorial for IJGIS (Sui and Goodchild 2001). Using the nascent evidence that emerged in the late 1990s, we speculated back in 2001 that geographic information systems (GIS) were rapidly becoming part of the mass media. On the basis of the proposition of GIS as media, we were able to link GIScience with theories in media studies such as Marshall McLuhan’s law of the media, which considers modern media as modifiable perceptive extensions of human thought (Sui and Goodchild 2003). Remarkable conceptual and technological advances in GIS have been made during the past 10 years. The goal of this review is to provide an update on the ‘GIS as media’ argument we made 10 years ago and to discuss the new challenges for GIScience posed by the growing convergence of GIS and social media.
Currently, we have thousands of websites offering a variety of mapping or geospatial services.
1. Online mapping sites are increasingly social
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Currently, we have thousands of websites offering a variety of mapping or geospatial services. Indeed, the launching of online mapping tools such as Google Earth, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth/Bing Maps, and NASA’s World Wind validated our speculation.
That GIS have also increasingly been recognized as media by software-tool developers and vendors is indicated by the names they choose for their products: GeoMedia, SpatialMedia, Map TV, or MapTube.
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This new role of GIS as social media can be understood from two perspectives. First, various users and contributors of online mapping sites have formed their own virtual community for exchanging information. Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Yahoo!
…………………….. recent postings by participants of the online mapping community have been covering topics of greater public interest, such as mapping of the location of bin Laden’s death, Google Earth mashups of critical sites using data posted on WikiLeaks, tracking the diffusion of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and assisting in the relief efforts for earthquakes in Haiti and Japan.
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Second, interactions of online GIS users or neogeographers (Turner 2006) or neocartographers (Liu and Palen 2010) are not confined to cyberspace. A growing number of these actions have resulted in meetings in person and activities in real places. For example, participants of OpenStreetMap (OSM) in both North America and Europe have been organizing mapping parties over weekends to work together to map the road networks for their communities (Figure 1). OSM even gives specific instructions on how to organize these mapping parties (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapping_Weekend_Howto). URISA’sGISCorps program has been able to organize evolunteers with GIS skills and send them all over the world to fulfill various mapping needs (http://giscorps.org).
Many other websites developed in the tradition of citizen science have also attracted large numbers of volunteers, who then meet in person to collect data for various projects that benefit the community (e.g., MapAction, Walk Across Texas, Bike to Work Challenge, CitySourced). Just as social media can be defined as social interaction via the use of Web-based and mobile technologies, to turn scalable communication into interactive dialog, so too have these new trends discussed here shifted the role of GIS from being an arcane technology used by trained professionals, to a popular social medium for the general public to report problems and to build community.
In summary, GIS as media constitute a fundamental paradigm shift in GIS, from the old model of an intelligent assistant serving the needs of a single user seated at a desk, to a new mode in which GIS act as media for communicating and sharing knowledge about the planet’s surface with and among them assess. During that process, GIS not only bring people together in cyberspace but also attract people to meet in person for the common good of theircommunity.The paradigm change also implies a simultaneous shift of technical focus, from local performance to network bandwidth, and increases interest in issues of semantic
2.Online social networking sites are increasingly location-based.
………… media are increasingly becoming like GIS. Again, this new trend of media as GIS can be understood from two perspectives. First, the mainstream media (TV, newspapers, etc.) are increasingly relying on GIS and geospatial technologies to report news and to tell their stories to the general public. Nowadays, Google Earth or Bing Maps are almost an integral part of the TV broadcasting of everything from weather and traffic conditions to major stories.
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The development of location-based social media during the past 2 years has moved social media from cyberspace to real place.
……………the Chicago Tribune and Time magazine use ESRI’s MapStudio (recently renamed as MapShop), whereas the Seattle Times and Guardian use Google Maps. Using the geospatial mapping server hosted by the Guardian, for example, the public can create custom maps from data disclosed by WikiLeaks. Furthermore, news organizations have posted the original data online so that anybody can download them, conduct their own analysis, and draw their own conclusions
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Media as GIS can also be understood from a second growing perspective that social media are increasingly location-based. Social media, led by MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on, have been described as one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 technologies. The phenomenon of social media is not only transforming the scene of computing but also stimulating social change of various kinds. The development of location-based social media during the past 2 years has moved social media from cyberspace to real place. Similar to the functions of Google Latitude ,most location-based social media allow users to know and see on a map where their friends are physically located at a particular time.
………………….the development of more robust data analysis and synthesis methods for studying spatial dynamics is a grand challenge for GIScience.
Where has always been one of the fundamental questions guiding journalists, along with who, what, when, why, and how. So we are not surprised to see what may amount to a spatial turn in journalism and the traditional media. Indeed we fully concur with the renowned journalist Krissy Clark (2011) when she observed that ‘The best journalism is like a map. It shows where you are in relation to others; it provides a sense of topography, a glimpse into a new world, or a better understanding of a familiar one. Ideally, journalism helps citizens and communities discover where they are, so they can better decide where they are going.’
3.Key challenges for GIScience
3.1. The data avalanche: Deep data for many?
This vision of synthesis is strongly associated with Digital Earth (Gore 1992), the creation of a single, unified perspective on distributed geographic information, together with the ability to visualize that information in a virtual reality. It raises substantial fundamental challenges for GIScience, in addressing uncertainty, matching data to application, tracking provenance, achieving semantic interoperability, and dealing with massive data volumes (Goodchild 2011a).
3.2. Spatial dynamics: Synthesis and visualization
Our growing capabilities of time-critical mapping and people-based GIS present us with an unprecedented opportunity to have a better understanding of the spatial dynamics of human behavior and societal transformation, but attaining this goal demands better tools to study spatial dynamics. We can concur with Yuan (2011) that the development of more robust data analysis and synthesis methods for studying spatial dynamics is a grand challenge for GIScience. Thisneedismoreurgent inthecontext oftheconvergence ofGISand social media. As of today, we still do not have the tools to automatically discover relevant information for a particular application over the Web, when a range of tools and websites are used by different groups of people
How can cartography and geovisual analytics contribute to representations of spatially embedded social networks?
3.3. New theories in GIScience: network, place, and multimedia narratives
Our knowledge ‘swims in the continuum of uncertainty and of indeterminacy’ [Pierce cited by Couclelis (2003)]. The current tide toward a data-driven science should not blind us to a basic fact that our understanding of the world is not entirely determined by the quantity and quality of data alone. Certain aspects of the world are inherently unknown or unknowable due to the limitations of our logical apparatus and cognitive capabilities (Couclelis 2003). Even for data collection through the mechanism of crowd-sourcing, such as the OpenStreetMap effort, Haklay et al. (2010) have demonstrated that Linus’ Law is applicable only to a certain threshold, beyond which adding more volunteers (the eyes of Linus’ Law; Raymond 1999) seems to lead to little further improvement in data quality.
3.3.1. The development of new network-based ontologies
Until recently, our data models and representation frameworks have focused exclusively on unary spatial knowledge – knowledge about properties z present at locations x in space-time, often expressed as maps. The convergence of GIS and social media has resulted in more data about the properties z of pairs of places in space-time x1,x2 (binary spatial knowledge), such as who is following whom on Twitter, social affinity and interaction as demonstrated through Facebook links, or Internet information flows among major cities. These binary properties involving pairs of locations are not ideally suited to mapping using conventional mapping and cartographic techniques. Networkbased representation models have been developed for environmental and disease modeling (Bian and Liebner 2007, Mao and Bian 2010), but representation of complex multilevel social networks remains a major challenge. Is there a way of using spatial information to generalize large complex social networks effectively, or to represent sparse and
inconsistent information in a way that makes the resulting analysis actionable? How can cartography and geovisual analytics contribute to representations of spatially embedded social networks? How can we use changes of edges in network graphs to represent changes of networks in physical space? What are other possible representations for network data: polygons, trajectory polylines, or other spatial forms? (see the final report of a 2010 specialist meeting on Spatio-Temporal Constraints on Social Networks at : http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/projects/spatio-temporal/docs/workshop_report_final.pdf
3.3.2. Formalizing place in GIS
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The convergence of GIS and social media prompts a new level of urgency for theoretical works to reconcile the world of space (traditional GIS) and the world of place (social media).
Agnew(2005,p.84) observed that‘...space can be considered as“top-down,”defined by powerful actors imposing their control and stories on others. Place can be considered as “bottom-up,” representing the outlooks and actions of more typical folks.’
xxxxxx Formalizing place in the GIS context will be both interesting and challenging; until recently, place has been off the intellectual radar screen of GIScientists, many of whom appear to use the two terms place and space somewhat interchangeably. Preliminary work has begun in the digital gazetteer literature (Goodchild 2011b). In a broader sense, the emerging critical GIS literature of the past 15 years has caused a subtle shift of focus from space to place, with its rich cultural dimensions; yet in GIScience, we still do not have an overarching theory of place or how to work with the concept.
3.3.3. Multimedia representation
This emerging world of place is increasingly represented by a combination of texts and blogs, photos, sounds, videos, and other means of human representation, real or imagined. Journalists have relied on this plethora of media representations to conduct location-based storytelling. Every place has a thousand stories, journalists tell them every day, and news organizations have archives full of them. With more and more location-aware technologies available, what methods and models can we follow to link GIS with this multimedia metaverse, to tell stories about the surface of the Earth better, and to develop a more coherent narrative for the future? The answers to all our questions may emanate from the landscape itself (http://murmurtoronto.ca). Are there more efficient, effective, and creative ways to link these stories to the places where they are rooted?
Big corporations will increasingly have custody of big data, and their bottom line tends to be driven by profits rather the common public good
3.4. Social and political concerns: Equity, privacy, and sustainability
In big-data society, Manovich (2011) warned that people and organizations can be divided into three categories: those who create data (both consciously and by leaving digital footprints), those who have the means to collect (them), and those who have expertise to analyze (them). Today the first group includes almost everyone in the world who is using the Web or mobile phones. The second group is smaller, but it is increasingly controlled by a few major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo! that can afford the massive cloud computing infrastructure to host their various free services, through which they not only collect but also retain and process a massive amount of data. The third group is smaller still. This trend raises some interesting social and political issues. Big corporations will increasingly have custody of big data, and their bottom line tends to be driven by profits rather the common public good. What are the implications? Will the growing popularity of social media, and social media integrated with GIS, enlarge or narrow the digital divide between the haves and have-nots (Sui2011)? Currently,we do not have guidelines on when it is appropriate to collect information from people and to study people without theirknowledge and consent. When is informed consent necessary for initiating research? Is there a way to preserve spatio-temporal patterns of social networks for research, but to protect privacy at the same time? Furthermore, what types of
Is there a way to preserve spatio-temporal patterns of social networks for research, but to protect privacy at the same time?
generalization and aggregation from statistics and cartography can be adapted to achieve these dual objectives and minimize the impacts of the stubborn modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) in our analysis? How does the level of abstraction and aggregation limit the types of network questions that can be answered? In data-sharing projects, what practices and restrictions are necessary to prevent malicious uses of spatial data and spatially embedded network data? Another issue concerns the various degrees of information accessibility between different groups of people. How can we reach people without access to mobile phones, computers, and the Internet? Considering the fact that not all Internet users are necessarily social media users, how can we disseminate relevant information to people who have not adopted online social-networking services? In addition, online social networks are only a small fraction of the total set of real social networks; how can we collect data on social networks that are not represented in the digital world? What spatial sampling strategies will allow us to measure spatial,temporal,and social properties in hard-to-reach populations? Civil society has been integrated into the military infrastructure of digital media (Internet, GPS, etc.): will it subtly accelerate the process of militarization in society? What are the environmental implications as a result of the convergence of GIS and social media? Will the trend stimulate more travel as a result of initial online contacts (thus potentially damaging the environment), or will it help the environmental cause by facilitating better planning and coordination of various human activities? Are the technologies of online social media and cloud computing ‘green’, in the sense that they create less environmental impact than the technologies they replaced? Or is it better to think of them as new technologies that add to humanity’s net environmental impact?
3.5. GIS education and public engagement
The fusion of GIS with social media will embed GIS and location-based services into people’s daily routines. This trend not only provides the GIScience community with an unprecedented historic opportunity for public engagement but also raises some fundamental questions about the meaning and role of GIS education. For the long-term sustainable growth of GIScience, it is imperative that we start a serious dialog on what,why,and how we should educate and train our students (and the public) about GIS and related fields. Many have argued that the development of spatial intelligence must be given more prominence in education at all levels, if the next generation of users of geospatial technologies, including geospatially enabled social media, is to make effective and responsible use of them (National Research Council 2006). With GIS and mapping technologies increasingly being used to illustrate issues ranging from earthquake relief and environmental disasters to human rights abuses and the on-going war on terrorism, what additional knowledge and skills are needed? Is GIS education ultimately about geographic education? If so, perhaps GIScientists can learn something useful from geographers’ efforts to engage the public and even possibly to change the world in meaningful ways (Murphy 2006, Castree et al. 2010). The GIScience community has a proud record of engaging the public through research on public-participation GIS (we bring GIS to the public) and most recently through VGI and social media (the public and neogeographers bring their data to us). What new collective strategy should we develop in our outreach efforts and public engagement?
4. Summary and conclusions: plural views of the world and multiple futures of GIS
In this editorial, we have identified a few topics that we believe are important, but we believe the future of GIS is inherently unpredictable. If there is one thing we are certain of, it will be that the future development of GIS will be on multiple tracks, as indicated by GIScientists’ growing interest in such topics as the GeoWeb, Digital Earth, CyberGIS, virtual geographic environments, and cloud computing. Perhaps one productive way for GIScience to proceed is to ride on the discipline of geography’s communication turn and the spatial turn that is evident in media studies.
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– the communicational turn (Adams 2009) – is evidenced by the formation of the communication geography specialty group of the Association of American Geographers and the publication of new geography journals and textbooks devoted exclusively to media and communication geography. Although interest in media and communication has been identified as a relatively new phenomenon, geographers of various philosophical persuasions have long recognized the role of media and communication (and more broadly of language, maps, and GIS) in shaping space and place at various levels. As social media become more locationally aware and people’s experiences with their environment are more mediated, it is not surprising that media studies have witnessed a ‘spatial turn’ during the past 5 years (Morley 2007, Döring and Thielmann 2009), focusing on the complex interaction among people, space, and place as mediated by various media (Jansson 2007, 2009). Ground-breaking work has been reported by scholars in multiple disciplines under the general rubric of the spatial turn in media studies, ranging from the highly technical work of harvesting social-network data to the search for emerging geographical patterns of new social interactions enabled and revealed by social media.
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