The global nature and audience of these digital maps presents challenges when depicting contested spaces and place names.
The most popular digital base maps - such as Google Maps - are so ubiquitous that users to view the content as authoritative, yet in practice these maps do not represent the position of any international authoritative body regarding geopolitically sensitive topics such as place names or boundaries (Jacobs, 2012). They allow exploration and scrutiny of the world to a level not possible with traditional paper maps that were locked into a single scale and extent. Online base maps appear in Web sites and mobile apps supporting day-to-day activities such as route planning, location searches, and even gaming. The rapidly-growing OpenStreetMap project (OSM) provides base maps and spatial data in a similar fashion, but is built with crowdsourced data in a manner similar to Wikipedia and is shared under an open license. These companies heavily invest in constructing up-to-date base maps that support thematic map overlays or ‘mashups’. Recognizing maps’ potential to enrich Internet search and discovery, online search giants such as Google and Microsoft dominate the production and dissemination of mass-produced, global-scale digital maps. The past decade has seen the development of fast interactive digital maps that cover the world at a broad range of scales, from the continental level to the city block. Policies or statements of online map makers regarding disputes Behind the seamless navigation of the Web 2.0 world map lies a patchwork of contributor motives and worldviews that complicates an understanding of ground truth and warrants interpretation through the lens of critical cartography. We reflect on the long-term viability of customization and ambiguity as cartographic practices, commenting on ways that they shape - and are shaped by - the conflict on the ground and power of involved actors. We demonstrate how commercial maps can appear in any number of versions to satisfy disputing parties, and crowdsourced maps can undergo “rogue customizations” for varying time periods as irredentist or separatist contributors seek for avenues to express their causes to a worldwide audience. We provide examples of these customization and ambiguity practices in commercial and crowdsourced maps. In practice, the makers of these maps violate their own appeals to neutrality and ground truth by (1) producing customized versions of the map tailored to local laws or expectations and, (2) introducing ambiguity through the selective addition or omission of information in sensitive locations.
Producers of these maps occasionally publish policies on conflict resolution, emphasizing the mapping of ground truth and conformance to internationally recognized specifications. We examine how these conflicts are represented in mass-produced online maps with a worldwide audience, focusing on both commercial maps produced by tech giants such as Google, and crowdsourced efforts such as OpenStreetMap.
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How geopolitical conflict shapes the mass-produced online mapĬartographers have always grappled with the question of how to depict spaces of conflict where place names or boundaries are disputed.
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