Abstract
Information has always had geography. It is from somewhere; about somewhere; it evolves and is transformed somewhere; it is mediated by networks, infrastructures, and technologies: all of which exist in physical, material places. These geographies of information about places matter because they shape how we are able to find and understand different parts of the world. Places invisible or discounted in representations are invisible in practice to many people. In other words, geographic augmentations are much more than just representations of places: they are part of the place itself; they shape it rather than simply reflect it. This fusing of the spatial and informational augmentations that are immutable means that annotations of place emerge as sites of political contestation: with different groups of people trying to impose different narratives on informational augmentations. This paper therefore explores how information geographies have their own geographic distributions: geographies of access, of participation, and of representation. The paper offers a deliberately broad survey of a range of key platforms that mediate, host, and deliver different types of geographic information. It does so using a combination of existing statistics and bespoke data not previously mapped or analysed. Through this effort, the paper demonstrates that in addition to the geographies of uneven access to contemporary modes of communication, uneven geographies of participation and representation are also evident and in some cases are being amplified rather than alleviated. In other words, the paper comprehensively shows one important facet of contemporary information geographies: that geographic information itself is characterised by a host of uneven geographies. The paper concludes that there are few signs that global informational peripheries are achieving comparable levels of participation or representation with traditional information cores, despite the hopes that the fast‐paced spread of the internet to three billion people might change this pattern.
Highlights
Information has always had geography. It is from somewhere; about somewhere; it evolves and is transformed somewhere; it is mediated by networks, infrastructures, and technologies: all of which exist in physical, material places
Towards a study of information geographies. It is precisely this mobility and adaptability of information that provides the motivation to constrain the mutability of information through the creation of what Latour (1986) refers to as ‘immutable mobiles’: or information that can be transported without significant change to its inherent characteristics or meaning
This paper offers a review of key geographies of access, participation and representation using a combination of existing statistics and bespoke data not previously mapped or analysed
Summary
Towards a study of information geographies: (im)mutable augmentations and a mapping of the geographies of information. It is from somewhere; about somewhere; it evolves and is transformed somewhere; it is mediated by networks, infrastructures, and technologies: all of which exist in physical, material places These geographies of information about places matter because they shape how we are able to find and understand different parts of the world. The paper offers a deliberately broad survey of a range of key platforms that mediate, host, and deliver different types of geographic information. It does so using a combination of existing statistics and bespoke data not previously mapped or analysed. The current era is no different and this article surveys a range of contemporary information geographies to access patterns of mutability, mobility and underlying power relations relative to historical arrangements in the production and use of information
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