Support local

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

Bibliographic Data

ID12918131
AuthorsAparajita Bhandari (0000-0002-4844-209X, Cornell University), Rebecca Noone (0000-0003-2388-7647, University College London, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume16
Issue3
Pages198-207
Publication date2023-05-17
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCommunication Culture and Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1753-9137 • E-ISSN: 1753-9129
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/ccc/tcad018
OpenAlexW4376878185
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited30

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

Computer graphics (images · Data science · Local structure · Rendering (computer graphics · Rhetoric · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Sharing Economy and Platforms · Urban Planning and Governance

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Open DOIOpen Access