Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Support local: Google Maps’ local guides platform, spatial power and constructions of “the local”

Support local: Google Maps’ local guides platform, spatial power and constructions of “the local” 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. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Communication Culture and Critique Oxford University Press

Support local: Google Maps’ local guides platform, spatial power and constructions of “the local”

Download PDF
10 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/ou-press/support-local-google-maps-local-guides-platform-spatial-power-and-fRSgLFp8S6

References (24)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]
ISSN
1753-9129
eISSN
1753-9137
DOI
10.1093/ccc/tcad018
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

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.

Journal

Communication Culture and Critique – Oxford University Press

Published: May 17, 2023

Keywords: Google Maps; local; local guides; place; platforms; visibility

There are no references for this article.