Volunteered geographic information and networkedpublics? Politics of everyday mapping and spatial narratives
Wen Lin
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract The issue of a changing public that
undertakes and underpins Volunteered geographic
information (VGI) practices has not been discussed in
depth in the existing literature. This paper seeks to
tackle this issue of publics regarding the intersection
between VGI and public participation GIS. I draw
upon the notion of ‘‘networked publics’’ to illustrate
the complexities of social relations intersecting with
VGI practices. Networked publics involve a connected
set of social and technological developments associ-
ated with the growing engagement with digitally
connected media. Networked publics embody several
major characteristics including multiple memberships
spanning over vast locations and possibilities for
horizontal connections and bottom-up engagements. I
argue that the emergence and proliferation of VGI
reflect the major characteristics of networked publics.
Through two examples of VGI constructions in China,
I depict types of networked publics involved in these
processes. I show that the mutual constitution of
networked publics and sociopolitical and technolog-
ical transformations has produced new landscapes of
civic engagement in China. I also show the limits and
challenges of these VGI practices in this context. As
such, this study contributes to the efforts of theorizing
the geoweb through conceptualizing and foreground-
ing these new forms of social relations and interactions
engaging with VGI practices, which in turn may entail
new forms of knowledge production and politics.
Keywords Volunteered geographic information
(VGI) � Networked publics � Network culture � China
Introduction
In the introduction of Kaiwenmap (www.kaiwenmap.
org), an interactive mapping site, there is a statement
as follows, ‘‘We make records of the environment’’.
This site, written in Chinese, aims to provide a plat-
form for sharing information about environmental
issues in China. The site creator is a teenager from
California in the USA who had lived in China for
several years. Through a video on the site, he intro-
duces the motivations of building this site, how the site
has been used, and how people can contribute to
reporting on environmental issues. In particular, he
hopes that with this platform, everyone can report
environmental issues close by and engage in public
discussions and community services to improve the
environment in China. It is noted that around twenty
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have used
this site, on which the site creator commented in his
video, ‘‘Not bad!’’ This site is one of the many
examples reflecting the growth of user-generated
geographic information in recent years, through which
W. Lin (&)
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle
University, Room 3.73a, Level 5 Daysh Building,
Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
123
GeoJournal
DOI 10.1007/s10708-013-9490-1
spatial and locational information has been provided
and disseminated by people who usually do not have
training in traditional cartography or GIS. Researchers
have attempted to conceptualize these practices
through a number of terms, including volunteered
geographic information (VGI) (Goodchild 2007), the
geoweb (Elwood 2010), neogeography (Turner 2006),
and Maps 2.0 (Crampton 2009). In this paper, I focus
on examining practices of geographic information
provision and dissemination that are carried out by
users knowingly conceptualized as VGI. I consider
VGI as part of the geoweb, which refers to ‘‘the
merging of geographic information with the abstract
information that currently dominates the Internet’’
(Haklay et al. 2008, p. 2012). As suggested by Elwood
and Leszczynski (2012), the geoweb is constituted by
new spatial content forms, new spatial data practices,
and new spatial media—the informational artifacts
and technological devices on the geoweb. In this
sense, VGI here includes both practices of ‘volun-
teering’ geographic information to the geoweb by non-
experts and new forms of user-generated geographic
information associated with the geoweb, such as those
produced through OpenStreetMap, WikiMapia, and
Google Maps. Focusing on this aspect of the geoweb, I
seek to contribute to theorizing the geoweb through
discussing new forms of social relations and interac-
tions revolved around geographic information pro-
duction and usage in the Web 2.0 age.
In particular, who are ‘‘we’’ acknowledged in the
statement noted above? How might ‘‘we’’ differ in
various contexts? And consequently, how might the
audiences of such mapping platforms get enrolled and
involved in ‘recording’, ‘reporting’ and ‘mapping’
various issues? I argue that a further theorization of the
interplay between these VGI authors and audiences (for
which the line is increasingly blurred) connected through
one or more than one networked technologies is needed.
Notable research has been conducted to examine the
social processes associated with the recent emergence of
VGI. However, there have not been many studies that
explicitly examine the possible transformation of ‘pub-
lics’ engaging with an array of networked technologies
that underlines these ‘volunteering’ practices.
On the other hand, discussions of civic engagement
tend to invoke practices and actions from subsets of
civil society that include grassroots organizations,
community groups, labor unions, interest groups,
religious groups, and civic associations (Castells
2008, p. 83). This is evidenced in the literature of
Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) (c.f., Sieber 2006).
Recent discussions on the role of VGI in participatory
mapping are also informed by such conceptualizations
of actors involved in civic engagement (see also
Kingsbury and Jones 2009). Yet, these conceptualiza-
tions may neglect the role of the increasingly signif-
icant networked forms of social relations recently. I
suggest that the notion of ‘‘networked publics’’ by
Varnelis and other researchers (Varnelis 2008a) is
useful for understanding the social transformation
intersecting with the emergence of VGI production.
Networked publics involve ‘‘a linked set of social,
cultural, and technological developments that have
accompanied the growing engagement with digitally
networked media’’ (Ito 2008, p.2). This notion follows
a broad definition of network as a set of connected
nodes—what a node can be depends on the context in
which it is being discussed (Castells 2010). Networked
publics engage in multiple networked communities
facilitated by digital technologies, and they can
produce political commentary and cultural criticism
in a way outside the logic of traditional mainstream
media operation. There are also significant forms of
unequal power relations in networked publics. While
networked communities and publicity are not entirely
new, it is significant that increasingly individual and
group identities are shaped by and constructed through
networked communications among users not neces-
sarily residing in a shared locale, facilitated by the
development of new information communication
technologies in recent decades. I further draw upon
Thompson’s (1995) work on publicness and argue that
such a framing of networked publics underpins some
new meanings of ‘public’ with increasingly diverse
types of engagements and acts that may blur the lines
of conventional meanings of public and private, and
politics and play.
The emergence and proliferation of VGI reflect the
major characteristics of networked publics, such as the
growing community of crisis mapping across nation-
state boundaries (e.g., Meier 2011), highly diverse and
quotidian mapping practices by a growing number of
people on the Web and through mobile devices (e.g.,
Tulloch 2007), and unequal power relations among
participants in their digital spatial data contributions
(e.g., Crutcher and Zook 2009). This conceptualiza-
tion also emerges from evidence of VGI production in
China, where nascent networked publics, I argue, have
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played an important role in shaping these VGI
practices. Through interrogating two examples of
VGI initiatives in China, I show that the mutual
constitution of networked publics, subjectivities, and
technological transformations has produced new land-
scapes of civic engagement. In particular, four types of
networked publics are delineated in this context. One
type is constituted by individuals with shared interests
but may be dispersed in many different locations.
These shared interests may not directly revolve around
political or social issues. They may resemble various
club memberships in many ways, but without any
formal organizational structure. The ‘backpacking
group’ in the first VGI example analyzed here belongs
to this type. A second type I outline involves more
intimate personal feelings and everyday life routines.
Those that interested in highlighting their favorite
restaurants and enjoyable experiences through VGI,
for example, are part of this category. Such acts can be
entirely personal, but they can also constitute a form of
resistance to dominant social spaces that are highly
commercialized in my example. A third type of
networked publics is more explicitly concerned with
social and pubic issues, such as environmental issues
in both examples. This type of networked public is still
largely issue-based in the context of my empirical
investigation. A fourth type of networked publics is
more heterogeneous and perhaps closer to the general
public in a traditional sense. But it may be much more
fleeting and fragmented in its digital forms. This is
reflected in those participants performing a political
act through virtual strolls in the second VGI example.
These types of networked publics may not be exclu-
sive to one another, and the boundary of each
community may be constantly shifting and evolving.
As such, I suggest that conceptualizing these highly
dynamic and networked publics that participate in
VGI production would help to enhance our under-
standing of the sociopolitical implications of VGI and
rethink possibilities of forms of civic engagement
situated in different contexts.
The publics in critical GIS and the ‘crowd’ in VGI
The questions of who owns and uses GIS technologies
and who are the public have been examined in the
literature of PPGIS (Sieber 2006; Elwood 2009). In
general, the public has been broadly defined in PPGIS
initiatives that may range from neighborhood resi-
dents at the local level to the general public at the
national level (Sieber 2006; Tulloch 2003). In these
debates, it has been recognized that there are multiple
publics involved in PPGIS practices within particular
contexts (Schlossberg and Shuford 2005; Bosworth
et al. 2002). In particular, drawing on the planning
literature on the notion of stakeholders, Schlossberg
and Shuford (2005) identify three broad types of
publics in participatory decision-making processes:
(1) those that are affected by a decision or program; (2)
those who can bring in important knowledge to the
program; and (3) those who have power to influence
the decision-making process. The authors further
delineate a range of publics that might be involved
in PPGIS, ranging from simple to complex types of
public. In this framework, a simple public will involve
a relatively small number of actors that are relatively
well defined, such as decision-makers. In contrast, a
complex public will include a substantive size of and
or highly heterogeneous actors and it is less well
defined (Schlossberg and Shuford 2005). This frame-
work, while insightful, implicitly suggests a radial
structure of publics, which may exclude some more
mundane, multiple, and decentered engagements
emerged in VGI practices.
While the notion of the public may not be explicitly
discussed in some other studies, a rich body of work in
PPGIS has investigated the complexities of actors and
organizations involved in PPGIS initiatives. It has
been well demonstrated that PPGIS practices are
highly contingent upon local contexts and political
culture (Elwood 2004; Ghose 2005; Sieber 2006).
These PPGIS practices are also influenced by broader
social political conditions, such as neoliberal policies
and initiatives (Elwood 2004; Ghose 2007). It is also
important to note that exogenous players may play an
important role in these PPGIS practices, who may get
involved and operate at multiple scales (Sieber 2006;
Sawicki and Peterman 2002; Ramsey 2008) and
through networks (Leiter et al. 2002; Elwood and
Ghose 2004; Lin and Ghose 2008). For example,
international NGOs have been important actors in a
number of PPGIS initiatives (Convis 2001; Kyem
2004; Sieber 2006). However, Sieber (2006) points out
that the public is still relatively less delineated in
PPGIS research, as many technological adaptations
tend to focus on supply-side approaches. She also
suggests that the growing usage of web-based PPGIS
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increases the difficulty of tackling the question of what
constitutes the public in PPGIS because more heter-
ogeneous actors from a broader spatial extent may get
involved (ibid).
As such, existing discussions regarding the publics
in PPGIS tend to focus on citizens and communities
that share the same locale, while also addressing the
influences of external organizations and agencies. I
argue that it is not only that the scale of public
outreach has been enlarged or changed facilitated by
new information communication technologies, but
also that new forms of social relations and interactions,
especially constituted by the emergence of Web 2.0
technologies more recently, have also been involved.
These new socio-technical assemblages can change
the composition of the general public and meanings of
community that underpin ways of civic engagement
and co-production of spatial data in a complex way.
Such complexities are embedded in the recent emer-
gence of VGI practices, which can take place at
multiple spatial levels such as global, national,
regional and local (e.g., Miller 2006; Tulloch 2008;
Meier 2011).
Regarding these changes, an important area in VGI
research has been to investigate the role of crowd-
sourcing in geographic information production (e.g.,
Goodchild 2007; 2008; Haklay et al. 2008; Elwood
et al. 2012). The ‘‘crowd’’ here generally is used to
indicate the much more massive scale of user and
producer of geographic information on the geoweb
than traditionally more easily recognized user groups
of geospatial technologies. Another field of inquiry
has sought to unravel who may form the crowd and
why, and to interrogate the sociopolitical implications
of such VGI production. For example, with respect to
the private actor that traditionally involves software
providers, advertisers have played an increasing role
in geographic information production and dissemina-
tion (Zook and Graham 2007). In the meantime, there
are significant efforts to develop open source codes
and platforms, indicating a growing open source
community (Haklay et al. 2008; Haklay 2010). A
prime example is the development of OpenStreetMap
(www.openstreetmap.org), a project initiated by Steve
Coast from the University College London in 2004. It
adopted the model of Wikipeida, aiming at producing
user-generated maps that are free to use (Haklay and
Weber 2008), which has greatly shifted the power
geometry of the major spatial data providers not only
in the UK, but also worldwide (Ramm et al. 2011). As
such, there are different levels of accessibility to
mapping and data provision facilitated by the pro-
prietary mapping platforms and open source platforms
online. Associated with this is that there have emerged
a vast number of users that produce VGI, with varying
degrees of contributions (e.g., Tulloch 2008; Kings-
bury and Jones 2009; Elwood et al. 2012).
Related to this theme of actors and stakeholders is
research on the motivations and subjectivities of these
mapping practices (Crampton 2009; Elwood 2010;
Schuurman 2004; Dodge and Kichin 2007; Wilson
2011). A number of studies have examined the
motivations of VGI contributors (e.g., Budhathoki
et al. 2008). Budhathoki et al. (2008) link the desire of
contributing user-generated content to open source
software development, which in turn has a parallel
with other social movements (e.g., Hertel et al. 2003).
The motives of open source software movement are
similar to those of voluntary action ‘‘within social
movements such as the civil rights movement, the
labor movement, or the peace movement’’ (Budhath-
oki et al. 2008, p.16). This line of investigation stresses
the voluntary and altruistic aspect of users’ contribu-
tion. Another stream of work emphasizes more on the
transformation of subjectivities in the context of
pervasive computing and mobile technologies. For
example, Wilson (2011) conceptualizes ‘a geocoding
subject’ that is constituted by practices of the cartog-
raphers that are constantly in the making through the
act of ‘seeing’ and utilization of data and code. These
new cartographers are not the traditional experts who
may be mainly concerned with perspective, projec-
tion, and accuracy. Underling these dynamics and
changes are the increased immerse of individual life,
streaming of daily activities and locational informa-
tion, as part of the mapping data and practices.
Studies have discussed the role of the crowd
engaging in user-generated content in relation to ways
of organizing labor and socioeconomic transforma-
tions (Graham 2011; Leszczynski 2012). Leszczynski
(2012) employs a political economic approach to the
analysis of VGI production, seeking to contextualize
the technological and business transitions underpin-
ning the geoweb’s emergence. Leszczynski (2012)
suggests that the radical shift in geographic informa-
tion production to more user-generated information
exemplified by VGI constitute new regimes of
production. Such regimes are implicated in political
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economic shifts in the forms of ‘rolling back’ of the
state. Through analyzing three dimensions of neolib-
eral political economy: free labor, private ownership,
and unaccountability that are implicated in the geoweb
construction, Leszczyniski argues that the state is
moving from a role of ‘‘sole purveyor of geographic
information and arbiter of cartographic truth to that of
one of many producers and facilitator or institutional
body of oversight’’ (ibid, p.78). Meanwhile, non-state
entities ‘roll out’ to play a more active role in
providing, disseminating, utilizing, and visualizing
geographic information, reflecting market-based
regimes of governance. This analysis is insightful, as
it provides an important dimension of conceptualizing
VGI beyond the focus on ‘‘the technical developments
and business solutions of Web 2.0’’ (ibid, p.86). Yet, the
author also points out that it is not a clear-cut dichotomy
of the state’s rolling back and the market’s rolling out.
Citizens also actively provide and share geographic
information beyond a mere state or market driven
initiative, such as in the case of OpenStreetMap.
Therefore, a further analysis of the composition of
the publics and subjectivities is necessary to investi-
gate the mapping practices that do not necessarily fall
within state or market-driven initiatives. This may also
allow new imaginations of countering the ‘‘neoliberal
recoding’’ of the geoweb and VGI (ibid, p.85). In
particular, I argue that the notion of networked
publics, discussed further in next section, is helpful
to examine these dynamics and ambiguities situated in
particular social and technological conditions.
The Web and networked publics
Numerous accounts have discussed the impacts of the
Internet on civic engagement, political activities and
social relations (e.g., Lim and Kann 2008; Fluri 2006).
Castells (2010) argues that networks have become the
predominant organizational form of the society, and
the emergence of new communication technologies
has further transformed the network society. In this
newer edition of his trilogy on network society that
was first published in 1996, Castells (2010) contends
that the transformation of communication is the most
apparent social change taking place in the past decade,
manifested in two significant shifts. First, there is a
much greater diffusion of the Internet globally,
reflected in its rapid increase of users in the recent
years.1 Second, there is exponential growth of wireless
communication worldwide. Increasingly, wireless
connections have become a major means of getting
access to the Internet, especially in the global south
(ibid).
Varnelis (2008b) further suggests the emergence of
networked publics, derived from economic, political,
and cultural transformations. First, while there is
continued dependency on material production, the
production and transmission of information on net-
works has become the key organizing factor in today’s
world economy (see also Castells 2010; Sassen 2002).
Second, accompanying the changes of global capital
circulation, world political order has also become
more diffused and extended beyond nation-state
boundaries with transnational governing bodies, con-
stituting what Hardt and Negri (2000) conceptualize as
‘‘Empire’’ (Varnelis 2008b). Varnelis (2008b) further
suggests that the networking of individuals, or
networked publics, resemble Hardt and Negri’s
(2000) notion of ‘‘multitude’’, which can serve as a
possible counterforce of Empire. Nonetheless, it is
also recognized that the effects of such a counterforce
remains to be seen (e.g., Lim and Kann 2008).
Third, there is a certain kind of network culture
characterized by remix and shuffling the diverse
cultural elements. An important aspect of network
culture is the growth of nonmarket production. This is
reflected in the open source software movement,
which has also been addressed in the VGI literature
(e.g., Budhathoki et al. 2008). This is what Bauwens
(2005) calls ‘‘peer production’’ that can facilitate
large-scale community activities in various areas that
are voluntary and nonmonetary (van Dijck 2009;
Tapscott and Williams 2006). There is also growth of
cultural products that are made by amateurs, which
does not follow the traditional logic of markets.
Perhaps one of the most notable examples is the
Wikipedia project. In these cases, it is recognized that
users who contribute these contents have motivations
ranging from social status enhancement, pure enjoy-
ment, and the belief of free circulation of knowledge
1 This transformation can be attributed to several factors
including ‘‘regulatory changes, greater bandwidth in telecom-
munications, diffusion of personal computers, user-friendly
software programs and the rapidly growing social demand for
the networking of everything, arising from both the commercial
needs and the public’s desire to build its own communication
networks.’’ (Castells 2010, xxv).
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(Varnelis 2008b). Nonetheless, the effect of such
nonmarket production with respect to its challenge to
big media and powerful corporate conglomerates
remains to be seen, and this form of cultural produc-
tion may embody new forms of exploitation of free
labour as has been discussed by a number of
researchers (e.g., van Dijck 2009). The ability of
global capitalism to adopt and facilitate the network
mode of production and the implications for military
conflicts are among the major concerns raised by
researchers (e.g., Castells 2010). Also, noting Dele-
uze’s (1992) concern, Varnelis (2008b) points out that
network culture may also result in the perception that
resistance is outmoded.
These economic, political and cultural changes are
intertwined with the change of self. In these changes,
the subject is less an autonomous individual as the
conventional notion of a modern subject. Employing a
postructuralist perspective, Poster (1990) also notes a
new form of subjectivity that is decentred, fragmented,
and multiple, influenced by the emergence of elec-
tronic media. What becomes more significant with
respect to the more decentred subject formation,
according to Varnelis’s (2008b) view, is that ‘‘the
contemporary subject is constituted within the net-
work’’ (p. 152). In this sense, the Cartesian subject has
dissolved ‘‘in favor of an affirmation of existence
through the network itself’’ (ibid, p.154). As such,
there is no straightforward division between the self
and the Net.
The emergence of network culture is also in parallel
with a significant reconfiguration of the public sphere.
The public sphere has been viewed by many theorists as
a key force in civil society that serves as a check on the
State. However, there have been many discussions on
the decline of the public sphere in the twentieth century
(see for example, Putman 2000; Dewey 1954; Habermas
1989). Habermas (1989) sees such a decline as resulted
from the increasing privatization of the public sphere by
mass media consumption and growth of media con-
glomerates. Meanwhile, there are other discussions on
the multiplication of the publics and other forms of civic
engagement that may differ from the classic bourgeois
public sphere model (e.g., Thompson 1995). In partic-
ular, the emergence of identity politics in the 1990s has
become a significant phenomenon (Castells 2010).
Social movements have enrolled identity politics to
fight for social justice for marginalized groups, in which
these marginalized groups such as minority groups,
feminists, youth, and so on, are termed as ‘‘counterpub-
lics’’ (Varnelis 2008b, p.155).
Outlining these abovementioned changes, Varnelis
(2008b) identifies several major characteristics of
networked publics. First, people inhabit multiple
networks that may be overlapping. Some of these
networks are composed of connections with intimate
personal relationships, while others may be composed
of a large number of weak ties and even strangers close
or far away. For example, individuals may frequent
forums, newsgroups, and blogs sites to develop
acquaintanceship with others. Networked publics
mainly constitute the latter type of networks although
the lines between the two may not always be clear cut.
Second, political commentary and cultural criticism
may be generated from below as much as from above.
Reports through new media have drawn attention to
issues missed or bypassed by traditional media outlets
(Varnelis 2008b; see also Fluri 2006) Third, there are
other significant forms of unequal power relations
shaping, and embedded in, the Internet. The Internet is
far from an ideal distributed model of network,
reflected in uneven access (Warf 2001) and online
representations (Graham 2011), the long tail effect
(Shirky 2003; see also Crampton 2009), and cyber-
balkanization (Chang 2008). The issue of digital
divide with respect to access to the Internet remains
challenging while the gap may be smaller with the
increasing number of Internet users in recent years.
Information censorship at various levels is another
threat. Moreover, influences from commercial inter-
ests such as pre-designed code that shapes the ranking
of search outcome is another example. Nonetheless,
barriers for entry into the public sphere have been
greatly reduced, and electronic media can create a
mass audience with multiple scales that are of global
and local (see also Bohman 2004).
I further draw upon Thompson’s (1995) work to
illustrate how the visibility brought by the Internet
might transform the meaning of public. Thompson
(1995) identifies that there are two basic senses of the
public–private dichotomy. One sense is concerned
with the relation between the domain of institutional-
ized political power from the state and the domains of
economic activity and personal relations fall outside
direct state control. This sense of the public–private
dichotomy largely overlaps with the distinction
between state and civil society. The second sense of
the public–private dichotomy is concerned with
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publicness versus privacy, and visibility versus invis-
ibility. In this sense, ‘‘a public act is a visible act,
performed openly so that anyone can see; a private act
is invisible, an act performed secretly and behind
closed doors’’ (Thompson 1995, p. 123). Based on the
second sense of public–private dichotomy, Thompson
(1995) further argues that in the late twentieth century,
alongside the development of communication media,
traditional model of publicness as co-presence has
been transformed to ‘‘new forms of interaction, new
kinds of visibility and new networks of information
diffusion’’ in which participants need not to be in the
same spatial–temporal locale. Viewed from this
dimension of publicness, multiple networked commu-
nities may become networked publics through visible
acts, both on and off line.
These dynamics and characteristics associated with
networked publics can be identified in the processes of
VGI production and dissemination. First, the two
significant transformations of communication technol-
ogies (Castells 2010) are an integral part of technolog-
ical factors in shaping VGI production in different parts
of the world (e.g., Elwood et al. 2012; Meier 2011), For
example, Elwood et al. (2012) note that the Internet and
smartphone systems are the major means of engaging in
VGI initiatives in the global north, while text messaging
is increasingly used in the global south. Meier (2011)
documents the emergence of several task forces for
crisis mapping, responding to crises that might take
place far away from the mappers’ residence. Second,
user-generated geographic information production in
many ways is similar to practices by the larger user-
generated content community, as discussed by a number
of studies (e.g., Sui 2008; Haklay et al. 2008), along with
the embedded social inequalities (e.g., Crutcher and
Zook 2009). Actors and stakeholders are diverse and
connected through multiple networks (e.g., Tulloch
2008). Furthermore, networked publics are context-
dependent and it is important to illustrate how particular
networked publics might evolve in particular historical
and geographical contexts, which is the aim of the
empirical investigation below through the case of China.
Networked publics with Chinese characteristics
Networked publics evolve and are shaped by different
spatial and temporal contexts. I argue that nascent
networked publics have emerged in China, which has
been intersected with the emergence of VGI practices
in China. These networked publics share the major
characteristics of Varnelis’s notion. However, they
have also been shaped by socio-political conditions in
China, manifested in various subtle ways of interac-
tions and communications of resistance and civic
engagement. For example, Chinese netizens2 crea-
tively use different linguistic terms to bypass or mock
Internet censorship. Second, these publics are still
largely issue-specific and fragmented, partly due to the
political control by the state (Yang and Calhoun
2007). In particular, Guobin Yang’s (2009a) rich and
thought-provoking account of Chinese online activism
underlines the emerging networked publics, although
Yang does not employ this notion in his analysis.
Before I present Yang’s analysis further to make the
link, it is important to outline some broader back-
ground information regarding the cyberspace in
China.
It has been generally recognized that the economic
reforms since the late 1970 s have greatly transformed
the Chinese society as compared to its pre-reform era.3
Moreover, with these socioeconomic transformations
and the recent information communication technology
developments, netizens have played an increasing role
in public discussion in recent years. Chinese netizens,
with a rise from 22.5 million in 2000 to currently more
than 500 million (CNNIC 2012), have been considered
representing an important voice in public discussion.
More recently, the digital landscape in China has
experienced some significant changes with greater
usage of Web 2.0 technologies and mobile devices.
First, Chinese netizens are increasingly mobile and the
2 I use ‘‘netizens’’ here to refer broadly to anyone that is
engaged with some forms of Internet usage.3 First, the state has retrenched from its all-encompassing role
in the Maoist era to a more indirect way of social control (e.g.,
Huang 1999; Wu 2002). Second, the roles and composition of
communities have also been transformed with respect to
community participation. As noted by Plummer and Taylor
(2004), in the Maoist period, the significant role of communities
in China is manifested in providing labour to collective
production through mass mobilization. This form of community
participation, while still has some influences at a much smaller
scale (Boland and Zhu 2012), is significantly weakened
(Plummer and Taylor 2004). Third, China’s media landscape
has been transformed with greater privatization. While the state
still has strong control on mainstream media, the voices
channelled through new media and the Internet have been
recognized as an important form of public opinion and require
the attention from the state (Yang 2009a; see also Lin 2012).
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123
Internet has become a very important source of
information. Almost 70 per cent of the users access
the Internet through mobile phones, closer to the rate
of using desktop computers at 73.4 per cent. There is a
high rate of using the Internet for news sources that is
more than 70 per cent (CNNIC 2012). Second, the way
netizens communicate with each other has undergone
some changes with the very recent emergence of social
networking sites, which have grown rapidly in China,
especially the micro-blogging sites. There are 48.7 per
cent of the netizens using micro-blogging sites, while
other more conventional ways of online communica-
tions such as email, bulletin board systems (BBS) and
blogs have dropped4 (ibid). In particular, users of
Weibo (www.weibo.com), China’s equivalent of
Twitter,5 have grown to more than 280 million in 2011
(http://www.199it.com/archives/21026.html).
In parallel, there are public discussions of the
growth of civil society in China. The major discus-
sions centre on the growth of NGO, of which the
number has grown from around 4,000 in 1980 to more
than 380,000 in 2008 (An 2010). The increasing role
of netizens’ discussions on citizenship rights defence
and putting pressure on public policies has also been
recognized as a major factor (Gao 2010a). What is
interesting is that these discussions are carried out in
the digital media, which can take a form as a forum
discussion that is broadcasted by online media (Gao
2010a) or a video lecture sponsored by online media
groups (Gao 2010b). For example, there is an annual
selection of the Top Ten Civil Society Incidents,
which was embarked in 2010 by Beijing University
Civil Society Research Centre. Many of the selected
incidents involve the role of netizens in voicing
concerns over social injustice.
However, scholars also suggest increasing and
more sophisticated political control over the Internet
(e.g., MacKinnon 2010). As such, on the one hand,
there is vast Internet censorship in place, filtering
sensitive information or blocking many websites that
the government sees as threatening (Qiu 2000; Kluver
2005). On the other hand, Chinese netizens have found
ways of navigating the censored digital landscape.
Yang (2009a) argues that despite the increasing
political control, the Internet culture that is full of
humour, participatory, and contentious is growing.
Drawing from social movement theories, Yang devel-
ops a multi-interactionism framework, namely foreg-
rounding online activism in interaction with state
power, culture, the market, civil society, and transna-
tionalism (ibid).
In particular, the feature of user-generated contri-
bution opens possibilities of appropriating the Internet
in creative or subversive ways (Yang 2009b). Without
doubt, the Internet changes the speed and extent of
information circulation. Yet, social factors also play
an important role in shaping these online interactions
and communications, for which the ‘Jia Junpeng
phenomenon’ is a telling example. On July 16th, 2009,
a message of ‘Jia Junpeng, your mother is calling you
back home for dinner’ was posted on a computer
gaming forum, which soon spread China’s cyberspace
with more than 300,000 comments and 8 million views
of the original post by July 18th (People’s Daily 2009).
The phrase later was also appropriated politically by
activists (Pierson 2009). This phenomenon, while seen
by some as a mere reflection of the Internet meme
culture as well as of loneliness shared by vast Chinese
netizens (People’s Daily 2009), has also been associ-
ated with ‘subversive undertones’ of virality due to the
growing role of the Internet as a social outlet in
China’s society (Pierson 2009). Yang (2009b) further
elaborates three characteristics of Chinese Internet
culture that have shaped the Jia Junpeng phenomenon.
First, there is a rich and dynamic culture of BBS in
China as the earlier Internet users began their online
activities through BBS. Thus BBS remain an impor-
tant field for netizens’ participation, while blogs and
social networking sites are becoming more popular.
Such a root in BBS may have fostered a more
integrated Internet community in China due to the
forum-format discussions facilitated by BBS. Second,
this short original post of calling Jia Junpeng home for
dinner was not very specific, which in turn struck a
chord with many Chinese Internet users’ emotions that
may derive from a range of unsatisfactory issues both
online and offline, including concerns about social and
political issues such as corruption (ibid). Lastly, the
4 Specifically, the usage of email dropped from 54. 6 per cent in
2010 to 47.9 per cent in 2011, BBS from 32.4 per cent to 28.2 per
cent and blogs from 64.4 per cent to 62.1 per cent (CNNIC
2012).5 Weibo allows users to post comments on other users’
messages, photos and videos, which can spread information
quickly. In particular, users may use pictures to circumvent the
length limit of each Weibo post and the information censorship
that may restrict usage of certain texts.
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123
power of play as a social and creative act and
ingredient for community is another important factor.
Many jokes were produced responding to the Jia
Junpeng message, in which people competed to be
funnier. This playfulness is part of Chinese Internet
culture (Yang 2009a, b), and there is an increase of
such playfulness since the 1990s (ibid). This culture of
playfulness may not be unique, as similar traits can be
found in Kingsbury and Jones’s (2009) analysis of the
Dionysian dimension of mapping on Google Earth.
This event of Jia Junpeng, along with many other
online events that drew widespread attention and
discussions, is a good example of the emerging
networked publics in China. These citizens communi-
cate through multiple networks, especially through
online forums, blogs, chat rooms, and social network-
ing sites. These groups are young and are increasingly
more diverse, although there is a significant urban and
rural divide. They participate in discussions on public
issues as well as seeking entertainments online. In
addition to existing organizational-based online activ-
ism (Yang 2009a), there have been more spontaneous,
individualized but also converged discussions cover-
ing a wide range of social issues, in parallel with the
rapid growth of social networking sites and increasing
usage of mobile devices (see also Lin 2013, 2012).
Meanwhile, these communities in China also differ
from their counterparts elsewhere, as the interactions
and communications are also shaped by socio-political
conditions in China, for example, the netizens’ creative
usage of different linguistic terms to bypass or mock
the internet censorship. Second, these publics are still
largely issue-specific and fragmented, partly due to the
political control by the state (Yang and Calhoun 2007).
Such civic engagement often takes the form of the
netizens acting as virtual ‘‘onlookers’’, which refers to
the practice of following particular topic discussions
online by either posting in various forums, chat rooms,
or social networking sites (Hu 2011). By increasing
the amount of postings on that topic in question, it
presents a form of monitoring from the ‘‘crowd’’ and
creates pressure for related state agencies (ibid). Such
an act corresponds to Thompson’s (1995, p.123)
conceptualization of the second sense of ‘publicity’,
that is, ‘‘a public act is a visible act.’’ Many VGI
contributors have employed this tactic in China (Lin
2012; 2013). Next, I will discuss two cases of VGI
mapping to show how they intersect with these social
relations addressed here.
VGI by and for networked publics in China
In my analysis of the following two examples, I will
focus on illustrating how the processes of VGI
production are underpinned by, and intersected with,
multiple networked publics, comprising various sizes
of actors and stretching across space and time. The
first example is on a website called ‘‘FindingChina’’
(Fig. 1). Through this website, the founder, Wang,6 is
interested in providing a platform for people to
contribute and share a number of different issues
through marking down the related coordinates. The
homepage is divided into three major sections from
left to right. On the left part is the information for user
registration and login, followed by some postings
listed vertically. The section in the center has a map
bar listed on top, with a label noting ‘‘Finding China’s
Coordinate System’’. Following this map bar at the
bottom are particular examples of coordinates. On the
right part is a section on using maps and navigation.
If one clicks on the map bar in the center from the
homepage, a mapping interface will appear (Fig. 2).
There are eight categories of marking the coordinates
(shown at the bottom of the map in Fig. 2), which are:
food, culture, scenery, lodging, environment route,
private, and others. Each category has a particular
symbol assigned. If the user clicks on one of the
locations shown in the map (top part of Fig. 3), a
similar view of mashups to those in Google Maps will
appear. For example, in Fig. 3, the title in the pop-up
textbox of this particular location is ‘‘Chaos created by
city management guards in Kunming City’’. An image
is also included in the text. The reader can click on the
embedded link to read the more in-depth description of
the report (bottom part of Fig. 3).
In many ways, this website shares many character-
istics of a GIS system, with a layer oriented interface
and attribute information imbedded in each point. At
the time of fieldwork, this platform collected 203 sets
of coordinates. This mapping platform was built using
application programming interfaces (APIs) from Go-
ogle Maps. Wang’s college degree was in English
literature, and he learned by himself how to set up a
website and employ APIs from Google Maps to
develop this online database. Any user, registered or
non-registered, can download these coordinates in
6 Pseudonyms are used for the interviewees.
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123
three formats such as the Keyhole Markup Language
(KML) format.
Wang became interested in sharing geographic data
after his graduation from college when he was very
interested in travelling and backpacking in 1997.
Before the emergence of web mapping and wider
availability of GPS devices, he and his friends bought
‘‘very thick’’ map books (Wang, personal interview,
August 2011). However, it was not convenient to use
these thick books for backpacking. As such, he was
keen to adopt web-based maps. He also found that
information shared by fellow backpackers was help-
ful. For example, he could follow other backpackers’
routes to a particular place. Many of these places may
not be easy to find from the regular maps, as these
places may be very remote. Sharing geographic
information among backpackers thus can be helpful.
‘‘If I visit a place that is really beautiful, I can record
the location information using a GPS for example.
And I can share this with other backpackers. Similarly,
I can download a particular set of coordinates shared
by others and use that as the guide to find the place.’’
(Wang, personal interview, August 2011) Building
upon this initial interest, he started to build this
website in 2006. Gradually, these eight categories
have emerged based on the coordinates users
contributed.
Wang’s initial interest of sharing geographic infor-
mation within a particular group of shared interests,
backpacking in this case, is obviously not uncommon
or new. Yet the Internet has expanded the communi-
cation and exchange between these members that may
reside in various locations in the country, building
tight and loose bonds among group members. The
Web 2.0 and mobile technologies further facilitate the
sharing of geographic information. However, such
sharing of information extends to other areas as well,
such as these in the categories identified as ‘‘culture’’
and ‘‘environment’’, which emphasize more on social
issues. As such, users and contributors of this latter
Fig. 1 Screenshot of Finding China’s Homepage (Accessed 22 February 2012)
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123
type of information may come from a different
background as compared to those interested in exploring
new places. This site also provides a platform for
displaying both public and personal interests (such as the
‘‘private’’ category). In this way, multiple networks of
users and contributors have emerged.
Such sharing may in turn help to constitute and
construct group identities. As noted by Wang, ‘‘If
everyone can share information about the pollution
they see in their everyday life, it can create an
atmosphere… People will be more aware of the wider
environmental issues in China.’’ (Wang, personal
interview, August 2011) In this comment, Wang
stressed the importance of sharing mashups on
environmental issues and creating a certain atmo-
sphere for discussions and enhancing public aware-
ness. This atmosphere will be generated through the
digital space by multiple VGI contributions. In many
ways, these mashups are spatial narratives that are
oriented towards everyday life, but they can facilitate
community formation and broader discussions. A
similar line of thinking can be seen in the cultural
mashups in this example (see Figs. 3, 4). He states that
‘‘the cultural mashups have a function, that is, to
monitor what’s going on. If more people are sharing
this kind of information on the Web… it will be
similar to [creating an atmosphere through] the
environmental mashups.’’ (Wang, personal interview,
August 2011). In many ways, the efforts of the
‘Kaiwenmap’ example raised in the beginning of this
paper resemble the attempts of creating a certain
‘atmosphere’ through these mashups in this above
example, which can be perceived as producing forums
for public engagement.
Two types of networked publics can be identified in
this case. The first one is the community of backpack-
ers in this example, which is similar to traditional
social networks, but has also been influenced by
information technologies through linking members
from different locations. The second one is composed
Fig. 2 The major map interface of Finding China (Accessed 22 February 2012)
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of those who contribute to a wider range of topics,
attending to social issues. However, Wang was also
disappointed at the overall level of participation by
other users. He noted that this might be due to the fact
that the backpackers’ community itself, from which
the initial interest was derived, was a small network.
Those who were willing to share information through
online mapping were even a smaller number within the
group. He also noted that his lack of any aggressive
promotion of his site could be a factor. While it was
expected that other people rather than backpackers
were likely to contribute as well, he addressed that it
was the case that most users browsed and downloaded
the data rather than contributing new data to the site.
This is in resonance with other cases observed
elsewhere (van Dijck 2009), reflecting the long-tail
effect in the cyberspace.
The second example of VGI embodies two types of
networked publics: one is similar to that of backpack-
ers shown in the first example, while the other is wider
and more diverse, composed of those performing a
political act through the tool provided by this VGI
practice. Specifically, this VGI initiative is an online
interactive tool entitled ‘‘Strolling with 200 Mu,’’
created for an art performance project called ‘‘Every-
one’s East Lake’’ (EEL). This art performance project
aimed to speak out concerns regarding a land grab of
an urban lake in Wuhan City. Each performance was
pinned on an overview map using the platform of
Google Maps.
This ‘‘Strolling with 200 Mu’’ was developed by
three participants outside Wuhan. It was located at
where an area called ‘‘200 Mu’’ that was about to be
filled. This is an interactive tool embedded in Google
Maps. Users can click on a polygon of the size of two
hundred mu (33 acres) and move it around to any city
(Fig. 4). In this way, as one of the authors of this
project explained, users can understand how big two
hundred mu of the lake surface would be. But
furthermore, the term ‘‘strolling’’ has a special mean-
ing in current China, which is to protest. As such, using
and playing with this tool may be a simple act; yet, it
embeds particular political meanings and can be seen
as a form of virtual protest. I have examined the
meaning of this virtual representation further else-
where (Lin 2013). Here, I would like to highlight the
network aspect of this construction of mapping.
First, this project was one of the only two projects
allowed to be carried out without participants being in
the local site in Wuhan, a notion stressed by the
organizers of EEL. Linked by digital media and Web
technologies, this is a participatory act outside the
Fig. 4 Screenshot of ‘‘Strolling with 200 Mu’’ (accessed 11 June 2010)
Fig. 3 Top: an example of a location in the category of culture
for coordinates; bottom: screenshot of the more in-depth
description on a particular location (accessed 22 February 2012)
b
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123
local community who would bear the impact of this
land grab most. As noted earlier, this participatory act
is carried out by two networked publics. On the one
hand, this tool was developed by three VGI authors
living in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, part of a
networked public that comprise the artists and non-
artists who were directly involved in the EEL project.
This is similar to the case of the community of
backpackers shown in the first example, but perhaps is
of a smaller spatial scale.
The other networked public involved in this
participatory act is various map users who dragged
the polygon of ‘‘200 Mu’’ to their selected places
shown on the map and strolled with ‘‘200 Mu’’
virtually. This tool of ‘digital strolling’, enabled by an
interactive mapping platform, is accessible within
China. It attracted many users to ‘play with this tool’,
according to one of the tool builders. This is a much
wider and vaster networked public, containing more
weak ties and strangers, which may share similar
concerns about the consequences of rapid urban
growth and encroachment of urban public space. On
the one hand, many of these VGI practices are derived
from individual motivations rather than stimulated by
organizational goals. As one author of the ‘‘Strolling
with 200 Mu’’ project noted, he did not belong to any
organizations and he liked this way of participation
(Yang, personal interview, July 2011). On the other
hand, a sense of community of these networked
publics is also present, which can also be reflected by
the same author’s comment as follows: ‘‘These days
[of working on ‘Strolling with 200 Mu’] were the
happiest time in my life… I felt that I did something
for Wuhan.’’ (ibid) In a sense, the act of using this tool
and the popularity of doing so resonate with the
political appropriation of the case of Jia Junpeng
discussed in Yang (2009b), as both display a certain
level of playfulness and converged individual acts.
These dynamic networked publics coalesced
around various mapping platforms shown in these
examples suggest some important implications for the
meaning of civic engagement on two levels. First,
these networked publics in China emerged in a highly
regulated and censored cyberspace, and these mapping
practices constitute a form of resistance from the less
powerful (see also Lin 2012). It is also important to
note that these networked publics may involve actors
outside China, as my opening example of Kaiwen-
map.org indicates. Second, the everydayness and at
times playfulness embedded in these VGI practices
and constitution of networked publics underpin the
evolution and reconfiguration of publicness. This may
indicate new ways of political intervention in the Web
2.0 age.
Conclusions
A growing body of work in GIS and geography has
sought to unravel the mutual constitution of VGI and
its social and cultural contexts in which VGI is
situated. I argue that the notion of networked publics
(Varnelis 2008a, b) helps to better understand the
dynamics shaping VGI production. The emergence of
networked publics is associated with a wide range of
economic, social, and political transformations occur-
ring in the past decade. It is also implicated by self-
identity transition (Varnelis 2008b). Increasingly,
individual and group identities are shaped by and
through digital networked communications. This new
form of social relations distinguishes itself from
traditional social networks in a sense that the self
and the (digital) network merge as networked publics.
A certain kind of network culture has also emerged,
manifested through, for example, the open source
software development and user-generated content
contributions. These transformations set the backdrop
and shape the rapid emergence of VGI practices in the
Web 2.0 age. This does not mean that other types of
publics, such as those including grassroots organiza-
tions, community groups, and other civic associations,
have not had an influence on VGI practices. For
example, Elwood et al.’s (2012) VGI inventory has
shown the range of entities engaged in VGI initiatives.
Rather, I call for broadening the conceptualization of
social relations to understand these diverse and rich
constructions of VGI. This perspective also helps to
explore ways of countering the dominant neoliberal
logic in many socioeconomic contexts.
I further employ this conceptualization in an
empirical investigation of VGI production in China.
In many ways, networked publics in China are more
issue-based and fragmented, significantly shaped by
its sociopolitical conditions and transformations in the
past decade. With sophisticated political control over
the Internet, the Chinese cyberspace including the
recent Web 2.0 sites are a field of constant contentions
and struggles between netizens and the state. In these
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123
processes, individuals create their own spatial data and
narratives, and they can reach out to a larger audience
and build weak ties with other people. Four types of
networked publics are identified from this empirical
investigation to illustrate such dynamics and com-
plexities regarding civic engagement. With these
networked publics, voices from below have become
more visible, in this case, through engagements with
VGI. Yet these voices are still quite scattered, issue-
based and fleeting.
These VGI examples and other similar practices may
lack lasting power of mobilization for social changes
and material transformation. In addition, as noted
earlier, there have been a number of structural differ-
ences embedded in access to and usage of the Internet
and mobile devices, along lines of class, gender and age.
China’s case also represents strong state control on
political discussions, exemplified in its information
censorship. However, it is important to unravel these
struggles, negotiations, and creations through a broader
conceptualization of politics of everyday mapping and
agency. Elsewhere through the notion of ‘tactical spatial
narratives’ derived from Michel de Certeau’s work, I
have attempted to foreground and conceptualize one
form of such agency (Lin 2013) manifested in
performative neogeographic mapping practices. This
paper further discusses new forms of social relations that
intersect with VGI practices.
Therefore, such a conceptualization of networked
publics may help us to rethink and re-imagine forms of
civic engagement and participation manifested in
different and yet perhaps increasingly connected
contexts. In particular, these everyday mapping and
spatial narratives, performed by networked publics
and constituted through Web 2.0 mapping platforms,
resonate with the new forms of knowledge politics in
digital activism explicated by Elwood and Leszczyn-
ski (2012). Such knowledge politics embody visual
experiences through geovisual artifacts that tend to be
highly individualized, interactive, and exploratory.
These experiential cartographic representations gain
credibility through ‘‘practices of transparency, peer
verification and witnessing’’(ibid, p.10). More studies
are needed to interrogate what kinds of networked
publics have emerged and in what ways networked
publics have intersected with VGI constructions and
dissemination in various socioeconomic and political
conditions. These investigations will further provide
insights into understanding the implications of these
dynamic, decentered, and varied VGI practices.
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