Bhandari, Aparajita;
Noone, Rebecca;
(2023)
Support local: Google Maps' local guides platform, spatial power and constructions of "the local".
Communication, Culture & Critique
, 16
(3)
pp. 198-207.
10.1093/ccc/tcad018.
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Abstract
Experiences within cities are increasingly mediated by digital platforms such as Google Maps; thus, it has become imperative to establish critical frameworks to understand the spatial relationships these platforms reinforce and produce. Google draws on “local” knowledge through its Local Guides platform to add location-based data in the form of reviews and rankings to Google Maps. Through a critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) of the Local Guides platform’s rhetoric and Local Guides’ reviews across varying sites in Toronto, we compare and contrast the ways the platform constructs user-mediated local participation with the actual content the platform produces. We complicate Google’s claims to supporting the local by identifying review practices and patterns that use the platform to target and harass workers. We argue that the reviews reveal who and what belongs to the platform’s construction of “the local,” while at the same time rendering hyper-visible what it constructs as not belonging.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Support local: Google Maps' local guides platform, spatial power and constructions of "the local" |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/ccc/tcad018 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcad018 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Social Sciences, Communication, Google Maps, local, local guides, place, platforms, visibility, LIFE |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Information Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10177512 |
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