Article:
Doing Google Maps: Everyday Use and the Image of Space in a Surveillance Capitalism Centrepiece

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dc.creatorGentzel, Peter
dc.creatorWimmer, Jeffrey
dc.creatorSchlagowski, Ruben
dc.date.accessioned2024-03-01T11:39:02Z
dc.date.available2024-03-01T11:39:02Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.description.abstractThe article focuses on the app Google Maps. In structural terms, Google Maps is committed to the production logic of platform or sur- veillance capitalism, insofar as the collected user data are utilised both to maintain Google Maps as a “cartographic infrastructure” (Plantin 2018) and to predict and manipulate behaviour (Zuboff 2019). On the other hand, Google Maps presents an “image of the world” that, as a product of platform capitalism, also conveys specific notions that we depict by using the concepts of “networked images” or “operational images” (Farocki 2004; Rubinstein & Sluis 2008). First, we traced the development of Google Maps and classified it using cartographic principles and criteria. Building on that, we per- formed two empirical studies. In a first step, we highlight findings on the everyday usage practices of Google Maps. In a second step, we characterise city maps produced by residents of a medium-sized city in Germany using an app developed by us. The project thus sheds light on the appropriation aspect of Google Maps and, by exploring the micro- level of individual usage practices, knowledge, and skills, provides an empirical contribution that is comparatively rare in the context of platform studies. Developing a map application furthermore enables us to show that the selection of knowledge and its spatial anchoring – the “image of the world”– follows a different logic when certain indi- viduals create a map for specific locations (e.g., multimodal routes to “hidden culture”).en
dc.identifier.doi10.14361/dcs-2021-070208
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/21868
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.14361/dcs-2021-070208/html
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/23221
dc.languageeng
dc.publishertranscript
dc.publisher.placeBielefeld
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2364-2114
dc.relation.ispartofseriesDigital Culture & Society
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectDataficationen
dc.subjectDigital Cartographyen
dc.subjectGoogle Mapsen
dc.subjectMapping Appen
dc.subjectSurveillance Capitalismen
dc.subject.ddcddc:700
dc.subject.ddcddc:300
dc.titleDoing Google Maps: Everyday Use and the Image of Space in a Surveillance Capitalism Centrepieceen
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticle
local.coverpage2024-03-02T02:35:16
local.source.epage184
local.source.issue2
local.source.issueTitleNetworked Images in Surveillance Capitalism
local.source.spage159
local.source.volume7

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7(2) 2021: Networked Images in Surveillance Capitalism