Doing Google Maps

Abstract

Peter Gentzel, Jeffrey Wimmer and Ruben Schlagowski focus on the app Google Maps. In structural terms, Google Maps is committed to the production logic of platform or surveillance capitalism, insofar as the collected user data are utilised both to maintain Google Maps as a »cartographic infrastructure« (Plantin 2018) and to predict and manipulate behaviour (Zubo! 2019). On the other hand, Google Maps presents an »image of the world« that, as a product of platform capitalism, also conveys specific notions that we depict by using the concepts of »networked images« or »operational images« (Rubinstein & Sluis 2008; Farocki 2004). First, we traced the development of Google Maps and classified it using cartographic principles and criteria. Building on that, we performed two empirical studies. In a first step, we highlight findings on the everyday usage practices of Google Maps. In a second step, we characterise city maps produced by residents of a medium-sized city in Germany using an app developed by us. The project thus sheds light on the appropriation aspect of Google Maps and, by exploring the microlevel of individual usage practices, knowledge, and skills, provides an empirical contribution that is comparatively rare in the context of platform studies. Developing a map application furthermore enables us to show that the selection of knowledge and its spatial anchoring - the »image of the world«- follows a di!erent logic when certain individuals create a map for specific locations (e.g., multimodal routes to »hidden culture«).