New spatial media, new knowledge politics

Abstract

New spatial media – the informational artefacts and mediating technologies of the geoweb – represent new opportunities for activist, civic, grassroots, indigenous and other groups to leverage web‐based geographic information technologies in their efforts to effect social change. Drawing upon evidence from an inductive analysis of five online initiatives that engage new spatial media in activism and civic engagement, we explore new dimensions of the knowledge politics advanced through new spatial media and the mechanisms through which they emerge. ‘Knowledge politics’ refers to the use of particular information content, forms of representation or ways of analysing and manipulating information to try to establish the authority or legitimacy of knowledge claims. The five new spatial media initiatives we analyse here introduce new dimensions to the modes of collecting, validating and representing information, when considered against practices of many activist/civic encounters with other kinds of geographic information technologies, such as GIS. The significance of these practices is not in their (arguable) newness, but rather their role in advancing different epistemological strategies for establishing the legitimacy and authority of knowledge claims. Specifically, these new knowledge politics entail a deployment of geovisual artefacts to structure a visual experience; a prioritisation of individualised interactive/exploratory ways of knowing; hyper‐granular, highly immediate, experiential cartographic representations de‐coupled from conventional practices of cartographic abstraction; and approaches to asserting credibility through witnessing, peer verification and transparency.

Digital turn, digital geographies?

“…The proliferation and public accessibility of digital platforms for geographic knowledge dominant theory of truth, in particular advancing a shift away from the correspondence model of truth towards consensus and knowledge production with the digital which involves questions of how particular knowledges come to be considered legitimate (Elwood and Leszczynski, 2013) -remain influenced and marked by hegemonic social relations of, amongst others, race, class, and gender, as well as global digital divisions of labour (Graham and Foster, 2016). Moreover, they increasingly reflect the interests of the corporate entities that own and exert control over dominant digital spatial platforms by, for example, managing the use of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to which they may revoke access, without explanation, at any time (Leszczynski, 2012).…”

“…We now live in a present characterized by an abundant and diverse array of spatially-enabled digital devices, platforms, applications and services that have become ordinary and expected presences in our everyday lives. As a result of their pervasiveness, new spatial media are intensely bound up in the production of myriad, highly quotidian, spatial knowledges (Elwood and Leszczynski, 2013. For instance, the Surui, an indigenous Amazonian people, repurposed location-enabled Android handhelds introduced to chronicle and geolocate instances of illegal logging and mining within their territory to document sites of cultural, historical and spiritual significance and uploaded them to Google Earth as an interactive layer for navigation and exploration (Forero, 2013) 2 .…”

HazMatMapper: an online and interactive geographic visualization tool for exploring transnational flows of hazardous waste and environmental justice

“…HazMatMapper went live in October of 2016 and has been frequently updated since then. While it remains unclear whether greater transparency and accessibility to waste or socio-environmental data themselves lead to improved oversight and heightened activism (Elwood & Leszczynski, 2013), we believe that awareness is a first step.…”

Political View of Informationalism: Social Media and Netocracy

“…The concept of information politics, which expresses the demands of information, the ways of specific information content, the forms of representation, the ways of analyzing and changing information, has gained a new dimension through virtual media. This media environment again comes to the forefront while reaching the information, verifying the information reached and representing this information in different forms (Elwood and Leszczynski, 2013). This social environment, especially known as social media and information society, has been a new environment in which a lot of information in different areas, especially political information and movements, is shared.…”