Uneven Geographies of User-Generated Information: Patterns of Increasing Informational Poverty

Mark Graham, Bernie Hogan, Ralph K. Straumann and Ahmed Medhat

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2014, vol. 104, issue 4, 746-764

Abstract: Geographies of codified knowledge have always been characterized by stark core–periphery patterns, with some parts of the world at the center of global voice and representation and many others invisible or unheard. Many have pointed to the potential for radical change, however, as digital divides are bridged and 2.5 billion people are now online. With a focus on Wikipedia, which is one of the world's most visible, most used, and most powerful repositories of user-generated content, we investigate whether we are now seeing fundamentally different patterns of knowledge production. Even though Wikipedia consists of a massive cloud of geographic information about millions of events and places around the globe put together by millions of hours of human labor, the encyclopedia remains characterized by uneven and clustered geographies: There is simply not a lot of content about much of the world. The article then moves to describe the factors that explain these patterns, showing that although just a few conditions can explain much of the variance in geographies of information, some parts of the world remain well below their expected values. These findings indicate that better connectivity is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the presence of volunteered geographic information about a place. We conclude by discussing the remaining social, economic, political, regulatory, and infrastructural barriers that continue to disadvantage many of the world's informational peripheries. The article ultimately shows that, despite many hopes that a democratization of connectivity will spur a concomitant democratization of information production, Internet connectivity is not a panacea and can only ever be one part of a broader strategy to deepen the informational layers of places.

Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2014.910087

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