TY - GEN
T1 - Barriers to the localness of volunteered geographic information
AU - Sen, Shilad W.
AU - Ford, Heather
AU - Musicant, David R.
AU - Graham, Mark
AU - Keyes, Oliver S B
AU - Hecht, Brent
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright 2015 ACM.
PY - 2015/4/18
Y1 - 2015/4/18
N2 - Localness is an oft-cited benefit of volunteered geographic information (VGI). This study examines whether localness is a constant, universally shared benefit of VGI, or one that varies depending on the context in which it is produced. Focusing on articles about geographic entities (e.g. cities, points of interest) in 79 language editions of Wikipedia, we examine the localness of both the editors working on articles and the sources of the information they cite. We find extensive geographic inequalities in localness, with the degree of localness varying with the socioeconomic status of the local population and the health of the local media. We also point out the key role of language, showing that information in languages not native to a place tends to be produced and sourced by non-locals. We discuss the implications of this work for our understanding of the nature of VGI and highlight a generalizable technical contribution: An algorithm that determines the home country of the original publisher of online content.
AB - Localness is an oft-cited benefit of volunteered geographic information (VGI). This study examines whether localness is a constant, universally shared benefit of VGI, or one that varies depending on the context in which it is produced. Focusing on articles about geographic entities (e.g. cities, points of interest) in 79 language editions of Wikipedia, we examine the localness of both the editors working on articles and the sources of the information they cite. We find extensive geographic inequalities in localness, with the degree of localness varying with the socioeconomic status of the local population and the health of the local media. We also point out the key role of language, showing that information in languages not native to a place tends to be produced and sourced by non-locals. We discuss the implications of this work for our understanding of the nature of VGI and highlight a generalizable technical contribution: An algorithm that determines the home country of the original publisher of online content.
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U2 - 10.1145/2702123.2702170
DO - 10.1145/2702123.2702170
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84951190222
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
SP - 197
EP - 206
BT - CHI 2015 - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 33rd Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2015
Y2 - 18 April 2015 through 23 April 2015
ER -