De/colonizing OpenStreetMap?

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dc.bibliographicCitation.firstPage5051en_US
dc.bibliographicCitation.issue6en_US
dc.bibliographicCitation.lastPage5066en_US
dc.bibliographicCitation.volume87en_US
dc.contributor.authorSchröder-Bergen, Susanne
dc.contributor.authorGlasze, Georg
dc.contributor.authorMichel, Boris
dc.contributor.authorDammann, Finn
dc.date.accessioned2023-03-27T09:04:43Z
dc.date.accessioned2023-03-28T05:57:18Z
dc.date.available2023-03-27T09:04:43Z
dc.date.issued2021en_US
dc.date.updated2023-03-25T14:37:53Z
dc.description.abstractIn its early days, the geodata and mapping project OpenStreetMap (OSM) was widely celebrated for opening up and “democratizing” the production of geographic knowledge. However, critical research highlights that the new socio-technical practices of collaborative mapping often also produce or reproduce patterns of exclusion, not least in the area of relative data density between the Global South and North. These findings notwithstanding, we consider it important to acknowledge the increasing number of contributions of geodata from regions outside the old European core of OSM. This expansion of geodata production in OSM is related to a diversification of OSM actors and socio-technical practices. While OSM has often been described as a crowd-based project bringing together thousands of individual craft mappers, our analysis of OSM metadata indicates new institutional actors are gaining relevance. These developments have not only resulted in new collaborations but also conflicts between local mapping communities and institutional actors. We interpret these processes in two ways. First, the expansion of mapping activities can be viewed as a decolonizing process, whereby quantitative differences in data density between the Global North and South are partly reduced and new groups of local mappers are empowered to produce geographic knowledge. Second, these new developments can also be understood as colonizing processes. The engagement of large commercial actors in OSM raises concerns that the project (and its local mappers) could be used as a new means of data extraction and that in particular new and diverse voices in the OSM community are marginalized by a fixation on economically exploitable, modernistic and universalistic epistemologies. However, this supposedly clear distinction should not obscure the fact that colonizing and decolonizing processes intertwine in complex ways.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659
dc.description.sponsorshipFriedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (1041)
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/s10708-021-10547-7
dc.identifier.urihttp://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?fidaac-11858/2900
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.relation.issn0343-2521en_US
dc.relation.journalGeoJournalen_US
dc.relation.journalaltSpatially Integrated Social Sciences and Humanitiesen_US
dc.rightsL::CC BY 4.0en_US
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject.ddcddc:300en_US
dc.subject.ddcddc:909en_US
dc.subject.fieldgeographyen_US
dc.subject.fieldculturalstudiesen_US
dc.subject.fieldpostcolonialen_US
dc.subject.fieldsocialscienceen_US
dc.titleDe/colonizing OpenStreetMap?en_US
dc.title.alternativeLocal Mappers, Humanitarian and Commercial Actors and the Changing Modes of Collaborative Mappingen_US
dc.typearticleen_US
dc.type.versionpublishedVersionen_US
dspace.entity.typePublication

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