Street-level
Google Street View’s abstraction by datafication
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12656706 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aaron Shapiro (0000-0003-4501-6914, University of Pennsylvania, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1201-1219 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Media & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1461444816687293 |
| OpenAlex | W2578619259 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
| References cited | 54 |
While aerial photography is associated with vertical objectivity and spatial abstractions, street-level imagery appears less political in its orientation to the particularities of place. I contest this assumption, showing how the aggregation of street-level imagery into “big datasets” allows for the algorithmic sorting of places by their street-level visual qualities. This occurs through an abstraction by “datafication,” inscribing new power geometries onto urban places through algorithmic linkages between visual environmental qualities, geographic information, and valuations of social worth and risk. Though largely missing from media studies of Google Street View, similar issues have been raised in critiques of criminological theories that use place as a proxy for risk. Comparing the Broken Windows theory of criminogenesis with big data applications of street-level imagery informs a critical media studies approach to Google Street View. The final section of this article suggests alternative theoretical orientations for algorithm design that avoid the pitfalls of essentialist equations of place with social character
Abstraction · Aesthetics · Art · Big data · CONTEST · Data mining · Data science · Epistemology · Essentialism · Objectivity (philosophy · Political science · Politics · Social media · Sociology · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses
Big data - a big deal for sociology
Panoramic Street-Level Imagery in Data-Driven Urban Research
Digital Maps and Senses of Security
Restricted but satisfied
Estimating pedestrian volume using Street View images
Business Ethics and Quantification
Exploring street visual audits to make sense of unequal urban landscapes
The impact of street and building configurations on respiratory health risks in an urban environment considering street behavior heterogeneity
Do-It-Yourself Street Views and the Urban Imaginary of Google Street View
Internet access, place and belonging in the British asylum system
The semiotics of digital cartography at the Geoguessr interface
Environmental activism in the platform society
Mapping II
Security devices and segregation measures that promote homogeneities and heterogeneities in the western sub-region of the SPMA
Tensions in digital welfare states
It’s So Ridiculously Soulless
Pathways between objective and perceived neighborhood factors among Black breast cancer survivors
Sentient Photography
An On-the-Ground Challenge to Uses of Spatial Big Data in Assessing Neighborhood Character
Criminological Theory
Net Locality
Against Prediction
The Culture of Control
Rethinking Repair
Google Street View
Rethinking Repair
Working-Class Heroes
The Practice of Everyday Life
Code/Space
Google Street View
Geomedia
The algorithmic turn
Sensory digital photography
The Work That Affective Economics Does
Earth-Observing Media
Sovereigns, Spooks, and Hackers
Big Data Surveillance
Datafication, dataism and dataveillance
Why bother seeing the world for real?’
Making big data, in theory
Cultural studies of data mining
Using Google Earth to conduct a neighborhood audit
The Mezzanine
Avoiding the Ghetto through hope and fear
Situating the geoweb in political economy
Seeing Disorder
The ‘view from nowhere’? Spatial politics and cultural significance of high-resolution satellite imagery
Location-based services, conspicuous mobility, and the location-aware future
Ripping up the Map
Governing the geocoded world
Governing Cities
Police Media
Governmentality, Geography, and the Geo-Coded World
Location-aware mobile media and urban sociability
Thinking critically about and researching algorithms
Critical Questions for Big Data
Inflated granularity
Data Matter(s)
Lifeworld Inc-And What to Do about it
Situated Knowledges
Out of Order
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,11 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 18 |