Spatial multimedia representations to support community participation

Geo-Narrative: Extending Geographic Information Systems for Narrative Analysis in Qualitative and Mixed-Method Research∗

“…Important developments in this direction include multimedia and Internet GIS, which seek to enhance the knowledge production process of qualitative or mixed-method research through incorporating a wide variety of textual and nontextual materials (audios, photos, videos, and narratives) into GIS (e.g., Shiffer 1998Shiffer , 2002Al-Kodmany 2000Wong and Chua 2001;Bosworth, Donovan, and Couey 2002;Krygier 2002;Lancaster and Bodenhamer 2002;Sieber 2004;Matthews, Detwiler, and Burton 2005;Knigge and Cope 2006). In these applications, geographic features displayed in a GIS (or a Web page) are linked to various types of multimedia files or other Web pages with information pertaining to that feature or location (Shiffer 2002). By making "personal, local, and imaginative narrations, images, and other perceptual-qualitative information" accessible within GIS, multimedia and Internet GIS present "a set of alternative geographies and alternative ways of visualizing those spaces and places inhabited and experienced by diverse groups" (Mugerauer 2000, 318-19).…”

Usability evaluation and PPGIS: towards a user-centred design approach

“…Questions as to whether or how complex models and methods for spatial analysis should be made available to non-experts can develop from the type of research carried out in PPGIS. For example, research into appropriate visualisation (Krygier 2002) or the use of multimedia (Shiffer 2002), can be integrated with mainstream GISc research to improve the usability of GIS for occasional and nonspecialist users. Of significance is the concern within PPGIS literature of the limited use of sophisticated functionality of GIS (Craig et al 2002).…”

New spatial media, new knowledge politics

“…The substantial body of research on the knowledge politics of activist and civic engagements with GIS offers several important propositions. Much of this work examined the implications of GIS adoption in the late 1990s, as nongovernmental organisations, community organisations and activists around the world adopted GIS in growing numbers, in urban community organising and development (Elwood 2002; Ghose and Huxhold 2002); participatory planning initiatives (Elwood and Leitner 1998; Shiffer 2002); environmental activism (Sieber 2000; Tulloch 2002); anti‐gentrification activism (Parker and Pascual 2002); community‐based resource and land management (Macnab 2002); and participatory development schemes (Bronsveld 1994; Dunn et al 1997). A substantial emphasis of this literature has been the sorts of information, representational practices and meanings that citizens and citizen groups rely on as they use GIS to forward their claims.…”

“…Indeed, many of these NGO and activist uses of GIS and conventional digital spatial data emerging from PPGIS blend multiple technologies, sources and practices (Ghose 2007; Sieber 2000; Rattray 2006), and software‐level innovations in qualitative GIS have offered ways for incorporating multimedia evidence, narratives and so on (cf. Kwan and Ding 2008; Jung and Elwood 2010; Shiffer 2002). The simple fact of being able to blend multiple forms of information or representation in an online geovisual interface is not our primary concern – our focus is rather on how civic actors use geovisual interfaces to produce or assert particular kinds of knowledge claims within citizen politics or civic engagement.…”