Not at home on the range: Peer production and the Urban/Rural divide

Isaac L. Johnson, Yilun Lin, Toby Jia Jun Li, Andrew Hall, Aaron Halfaker, Johannes Scheming, Brent Hecht

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

59 Scopus citations

Abstract

Wikipedia articles about places, OpenStreetMap features, and other forms of peer-produced content have become critical sources of geographic knowledge for humans and intelligent technologies. In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of the peer production model across the rural/urban divide, a divide that has been shown to be an important factor in many online social systems. We find that in both Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap, peer-produced content about rural areas is of systematically lower quality, is less likely to have been produced by contributors who focus on the local area, and is more likely to have been generated by automated software agents (i.e. "bots"). We then codify the systemic challenges inherent to characterizing rural phenomena through peer production and discuss potential solutions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2016 - Proceedings, 34th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages13-25
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9781450333627
DOIs
StatePublished - May 7 2016
Event34th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2016 - San Jose, United States
Duration: May 7 2016May 12 2016

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Other

Other34th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Jose
Period5/7/165/12/16

Keywords

  • OpenStreetMap
  • Peer production
  • Rural
  • Urban
  • Wikipedia

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Not at home on the range: Peer production and the Urban/Rural divide'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this