Abstract
This concluding chapter reflects on some of the core themes that crosscut the contributed chapters, and further outlines some of the stimulating and significant relationships between volunteered geographic information (VGI) and the discipline of geography. We argue that future progress in VGI research depends in large part on building strong linkages with a diversity of geographic scholarship. We situate VGI research in geography’s core concerns with space and place and offer several ways of addressing persistent challenges of quality assurance in VGI. We develop an argument for further research on the heterogeneous social relations through which VGI is produced and their implications for participation, power, and collective or civic action. The final two sections, closely related, position VGI as part of a shift toward hybrid epistemologies and potentially a fourth paradigm of data-intensive inquiry across the sciences.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
1 We are grateful to Jin-Kyu Jung for bringing this example to our attention.
References
Bartscherer, T., & Coover, R. (Eds.). (2011). Switching codes: Thinking through digital technology in the humanities and the arts. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Berry, D. M. (Ed.). (2012). Understanding digital humanities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bodenhamer, D., Corrigan, J., & Harris, T. (Eds.). (2011). The spatial humanities: GIS and the future of humanities scholarship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Börner, K. (2011). Plug-and-play macroscopes. Communications of the ACM, 54(3), 60–69.
Budhathoki, N., Nedovic-Budic, Z., & Bruce, B. (2010). An interdisciplinary frame for understanding volunteered geographic information. Geomatica, 64(1), 11–26.
Burrough, P. A., & Frank, A. U. (Eds.). (1996). Geographic objects with indeterminate boundaries. Bristol: Taylor and Francis.
Cope, M., & Elwood, S. (2009). Qualitative GIS: A mixed methods approach. London: Sage.
Corbett, J. (2011, April 13). The revolution will not be geotagged: Exploring the role of the participatory Geoweb in advocacy and supporting social change. Paper presented at annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Seattle, WA.
Cutter, S., Golledge, R., & Graf, W. (2002). The big questions in geography. The Professional Geographer, 54, 305–317.
Dear, M., Ketchum, J., Luria, S., & Richardson, D. (2011). GeoHumanities: Art, history, and text at the edge of place. London/New York: Routledge.
Dunn, C. (2007). Participatory GIS: A people’s GIS? Progress in Human Geography, 31(5), 617–638.
Elwood, S. (2006). Beyond cooptation or resistance: Urban spatial politics, community organizations, and GIS-based spatial narratives. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(2), 323–341.
Elwood, S. (2009). Mixed methods: Thinking, doing, and asking in multiple ways. In D. DeLyser, M. Crang, L. McDowell, S. Aitken, & S. Herbert (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative geography (pp. 94–113). London: Sage.
ESRI. (2010). The latest in citizen engagement. ESRI advertising supplement. http://media2.govtech.com/documents/PCIO10_ESRI_V.pdf. Accessed 16 May 2011.
Fielding, N., & Cisneros-Puebla, C. (2009). CAQDAS-GIS convergence: Toward a new integrated mixed method research practice? Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 3(4), 349–370.
Foresman, T. W. (Ed.). (1998). The history of geographic information systems: Perspectives from the pioneers. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Fuller, D. (2008). Public geographies I – Taking stock. Progress in Human Geography, 32(6), 834–844.
Ghonim, W. (2012). Revolution 2.0: The power of the people is greater than the people in power. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Goodchild, M. F. (1992). Geographical information science. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, 6(1), 31–45.
Goodchild, M. (2007). Citizens as sensors: The world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, 69(4), 211–221.
Goodchild, M. (2009). Neogeography and the nature of geographic expertise. Journal of Location Based Services, 3(2), 82–96.
Goodchild, M. F. (2010). Twenty years of progress: GIScience in 2010. Journal of Spatial Information Science, 1(1), 3–20.
Goodchild, M. F., & Gopal, S. (Eds.). (1988). Accuracy of spatial databases. New York: Taylor and Francis.
Goodchild, M. F., & Hill, L. L. (2008). Introduction to digital gazetteer research. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 22(10), 1039–1044.
Gould, P. (1981). Letting data speaking for themselves. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 71(2), 166–176.
Gray, J. (2007). eScience – A transformed scientific method. Presentation made to the NRC-CSTB. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gray/talks/NRC-CSTB_eScience.ppt. Accessed 19 Dec 2011.
Grira, J., Bedard, Y., & Roche, S. (2010). Spatial data uncertainty in the VGI world: Going from consumer to producer. Geomatica, 64(1), 61–71.
Guptill, S. C., & Morrison, J. L. (Eds.). (1995). Elements of spatial data quality. Oxford: Elsevier.
Haklay, M. (2010). How good is volunteered geographical information? A comparative study of OpenStreetMap and ordnance survey datasets. Environment and Planning B, 37(4), 682–703.
Haklay, M., Singleton, A., & Parker, C. (2008). Web mapping 2.0: The neogeography of the GeoWeb. Geography Compass, 2(6), 2011–2039.
Halevy, A., Norvig, P., & Pereira, P. (2009). The unreasonable effectiveness of data. IEEE Intelligent Systems, March/April, 8–12.
Hey, T., Tansley, S., & Tolle, K. (Eds.). (2009). The fourth paradigm: Data-intensive scientific discovery. Redmond: Microsoft Research.
Higginbotham, S. (2011). Big data: Science’s microscope of the 21st century. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/big-data-sciences-microscope-of-the-21st-century-11092011.html. Accessed 19 Dec 2011.
Hilbert, D. (1900). Mathematical problems. Göttinger Nachrichten, 253–297 (original work in German; translated into English in 1902).
Jiang, B. (2011). Making GIScience research more open access. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 25(8), 1217–1220.
Jung, J., & Elwood, S. (2010). Extending the qualitative capabilities of GIS: Computer-aided qualitative GIS. Transactions in GIS, 14(1), 63–87.
Kindon, S., Pain, R., & Kesby, M. (2008). Participatory action research approaches and methods: Connecting people, participation and place. London: Routledge.
Knigge, L., & Cope, M. (2009). Grounded visualization and scale: A recursive examination of community spaces. In M. Cope & S. Elwood (Eds.), Qualitative GIS: A mixed methods approach (pp. 95–114). London: Sage.
Kwan, M. (2002). Feminist visualization: Re-envisioning GIS as a method in feminist geography research. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(4), 645–661.
Kwan, M., & Knigge, L. (2006). Doing qualitative research with GIS: An oxymoronic endeavor? Environment and Planning A, 38(11), 1999–2002.
Kwan, M., & Schwannen, T. (2009). Critical quantitative geographies. Environment and Planning A, 41(2), 261–264.
Lieverouw, L. (2011). Alternative and activist new media. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Maling, D. H. (1989). Measurements from maps: Principles and methods of cartometry. Oxford: Pergamon.
Manyika, J., Chui, M., Brown, B., Bughin, J., Dobbs, R., Roxburgh, C., & Byers, A. H. (2011). Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity. http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Technology_and_Innovation/Big_data_The_next_frontier_for_innovation. Accessed 19 Dec 2011.
Montello, D. R., Goodchild, M. F., Gottsegen, J., & Fohl, P. (2003). Where’s downtown? Behavioral methods for determining referents of vague spatial queries. Spatial Cognition and Computation, 3(2–3), 185–204.
Nielsen, M. (2012). Reinventing discovery: The new era of networked Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Poore, B. (2011, April 13). VGI/PGI: Virtual community or bowling alone? Paper presented at annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Seattle, WA.
Raymond, E. S. (1999). The cathedral and the bazaar. Sebastopol: O’Reilly.
Rose, G. (2000). Hybridity. In R. J. Johnston, D. Gregory, G. Pratt, & M. Watts (Eds.), The dictionary of human geography (pp. 364–365). Oxford: Blackwell.
Sheppard, E. (2001). Quantitative geography: Representations, practices, and possibilities. Environment and Planning D: Society & Space, 19(5), 535–554.
Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: How technology makes consumers into collaborators. New York: Penguin.
Sieber, R. (2000). GIS implementation in the grassroots. URISA Journal, 12(1), 15–51.
Sieber, R. (2006). Public participation geographic information systems: A literature review and framework. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(3), 491–507.
Sieber, R. (2011, April 13). Volunteered geographic information: Motivation or empowerment? Paper presented at annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Seattle, WA.
Sui, D., & DeLyser, D. (2012). Crossing the qualitative-quantitative chasm I: Hybrid geographies, the spatial turn, and volunteered geographic information (VGI). Progress in Human Geography, 36(1), 111–124.
The U.S. National Science Foundation. (2011). Rebuilding the mosaic: Fostering research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences at the National Science Foundation in the next decade. www.nsf.gov/pubs/2011/nsf11086/nsf11086.pdf. Accessed 19 Dec 2011.
Tobler, W. R. (1970). A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region. Economic Geography, 46(2), 234–240.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books.
Ward, K. (2007). Geography and public policy: Activist, participatory and policy geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 31(5), 695–705.
Warf, B., & Arias, S. (Eds.). (2009). The spatial turn: Interdisciplinary perspectives. London/New York: Routledge.
Weinberger, D. (2012). Too big to know: Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. New York: Basic Books.
Wigner, E. P. (1960). The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 13, 1–14.
Wilson, M. (2011). ‘Training the eye’: Formation of the geocoding subject. Social & Cultural Geography, 12(4), 357–376.
Wright, D. J., & Wang, S. (2011). The emergence of spatial cyber infrastructure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(14), 5488–5491.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Elwood, S., Goodchild, M.F., Sui, D. (2013). Prospects for VGI Research and the Emerging Fourth Paradigm. In: Sui, D., Elwood, S., Goodchild, M. (eds) Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4587-2_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4587-2_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4586-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4587-2
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)