Jon Corbett

Doing Public Participation on the Geospatial Web

The emergence of Web 2.0, open source software tools, and geosocial networks, along with associated mobile devices and available government data, is widely considered to have altered the nature and processes of place-based digital participation. Considerable theorizing has been dedicated to the geographic version of Web 2.0, the geospatial Web (Geoweb). To assess the theories, we draw on four years of empirical work across Canada that considers the nature of public participation on the Geoweb. We are driven by the question of how easy or difficult it is to “do” Geoweb-enabled participation, particularly participation as envisioned by researchers such as Arnstein and planning practitioners. We consider how the Geoweb could transform methods by which citizens and nonprofit organizations communicate with the state on environmental issues that affect their lives. We conduct a meta-analysis of twelve research cases and derive new findings that reach across the cases on how the Geoweb obliges us to redefine and unitize participation. This redefinition reifies existing digital inequalities, blurs distinctions between experts and nonexperts, heterogenizes the state as an actor in the participation process, reassigns participation activities in a participation hierarchy, and distances participation from channels of influence.

Powering Up: Revisiting Participatory GIS and Empowerment

Since 1996, participatory GIS (PGIS) has facilitated avenues through which public participation can occur. One of the ways practitioners articulate social change associated with PGIS interventions has been to qualify success using the term ‘empowerment’. This paper explores the extent to which PGIS academic literature has utilised, defined, measured, and analysed empowerment. This research will demonstrate the degree to which PGIS has, from 1996 to 2014, appropriately and adequately taken into account the causative and direct relationship between a PGIS intervention and empowerment. This article identifies works broadly dealing with PGIS, then searches within that subset of literature for the term ‘empowerment.’ The findings are both quantitatively and qualitatively assessed to explore the trends within the PGIS literature over time and to contextualise the ways in which empowerment has been identified, understood, and articulated. We conclude with a discussion on the extent to which future PGIS research and practice has the ability to disrupt power inequalities.

“I Don’t Come from Anywhere”: Exploring the Role of the Geoweb and Volunteered Geographic Information in Rediscovering a Sense of Place in a Dispersed Aboriginal Community

This chapter explores the role of participatory mapping, the geoweb, and volunteered geographic information in rediscovering a sense of place within a physically dispersed Aboriginal community, the Tlowitsis Nation from Northern Vancouver Island. Centered on a community-based research project, this chapter examines how the participatory geoweb might be used by Tlowitsis members to better understand and reconnect with their land-related knowledge, as well as examine the ways in which these technologies serve to re-present place-based memories and facilitate dialogue amongst community members located in different geographic settings.

Tlowitsis Re-Imagined: The Use of Digital Media to Build Nation and Overcome Disconnection in a Displaced Aboriginal Community

Using the case study of the Tlowitsis, a dispersed indigenous community in British Columbia, Canada, this paper explores the role of ICTs, and in particular participatory video, in nation building. Also, the paper identifies factors that affect both the involvement and exclusion of the membership and addresses the challenges faced and lessons learned. ICTs, in particular new media technologies, offer great potential to overcome the geographic barriers caused by dispersal. However, it remains uncertain how they might contribute to the process of nation building. In this regard, the authors present six fundamental requirements for nation building, and then use these requirements to structure an analysis of the Tlowitsis case study.

Searching for social justice in GIScience publications

ABSTRACT Maps are explicitly positioned within the realms of power, representation, and epistemology; this article sets out to explore how these ideas are manifest in the academic Geographic Information Science (GIScience) literature. We analyze 10 years of literature (2005–2014) from top tier GIScience journals specific to the geoweb and geographic crowdsourcing. We then broaden our search to include three additional journals outside the technical GIScience journals and contrast them to the initial findings. We use this comparison to discuss the apparent technical and social divide present within the literature. Our findings demonstrate little explicit engagement with topics of social justice, marginalization, and empowerment within our subset of almost 1200 GIScience papers. The social, environmental, and political nature of participation, mapmaking, and maps necessitates greater reflection on the creation, design, and implementation of the geoweb and geographic crowdsourcing. We argue that the merging of the technical and social has already occurred in practice, and for GIScience to remain relevant for contributors and users of crowdsourced maps, researchers and practitioners must heed two decades of calls for substantial and critical engagement with the geoweb and crowdsourcing as social, environmental, and political processes.

Relocating a sense of place using the participatory Geoweb: the historical document database of the Métis nation of British Columbia

The interactive capability and ease of use of Geoweb technologies suggest great potential for Aboriginal communities to store, manage, and communicate place-related knowledge. For the MA©tis, who have a long history of dispossession and dispersion in Canada, the Geoweb offers an opportunity in realizing the desire to articulate a coherent sense of place for their people. This paper reports on a community-based research project involving the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the MA©tis Nation of British Columbia (MNBC) – the political body representing the MA©tis people in BC. The project includes the creation of a Geoweb tool specifically designed to facilitate the (self) articulation of a MA©tis community in contemporary BC. It examines how Geoweb technologies have been used to create a participatory, crowd-sourced Historical Document Database (HDD) that takes meaning through the interface of a map. The paper further explores how the data contributed by members of the MA©tis community have been used to capture, communicate, and represent community memories in the dispersed membership. It concludes by examining challenges that have emerged related to platform stability and institutional relations related to the ongoing sustainability of the HDD.

A Hot Topic

The potential of the Geoweb to harness public spatial knowledge is increasingly recognized. Using these technologies, the public can volunteer their locational experiences. In the case of the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park Fire, these memories need to be captured or they will soon be forgotten. Collaborating with the Kelowna Fire Museum, this paper describes the creation of an online participatory map that documents public experiences of the fire. Through a map-interface, participants contribute their own multimedia information and comment on the contributions of others. This community-based research examines an individual’s willingness to volunteer their knowledge. Results examine participant engagement in terms of passive or active map use, perspectives of participants-as-experts, and broader themes of how the Geoweb can educate and preserve experiences about this event. Results demonstrate that while the mapping tool encourages users to interact with information about the fire, there are challenges in adding their own experiences.

Indigenizing computer programming for cultural maintenance

This paper presents the concept of a culturally and domain specific natural language processing framework. The Indigenous Digital Media Toolkit (IDMT) is a programming language with a specialized user interface that uses the Cree language and syllabic writing system to programmatically create digital artworks and provides a digital foundation for the maintenance and/or revitalization of Indigenous culture.