Hi there! My name is Brooke and I am a senior Geography and Environmental Studies major at Middlebury College. I am passionate about using GIS, remote sensing techniques, and cartographic design to expand on studies of environmental justice, recreational access, climate change adaptation, and landcover change. On this page you will find my work from various courses, independent study, and research positions.
While the growth of crowd-sourced and volunteered geographic information has helped the world of geospatial analysis expand in meaningful ways, it is necessary to consider the levels of uncertainty and skew that exist with this type of data. In “The Limits of Crisis Data: Analytical and Ethical Challenges of Using Social and Mobile Data to Understand Disaster,” Crawford and Finn explore the challenges, uncertainties, and ethical concerns that pertain to VGI usage.
The main types of uncertainty that exist with VGI usage is the amount of data skew and bias that can exist. Twitter data, or any social media data, is restricted in that it only represents the views and experiences of those who are using the platform. This means that tweet data represents the shared experiences of people who have access to technology, choose to share on social media publicly, and often represent a younger demographic. Twitter–and any social media network–is not free of bias, especially when only a small subset of tweets are geotagged and available for analysis. Additionally, the occurrence of power outages or lack of service might mean that in times of crises, the most vulnerable populations are unable to have their experiences reflected. There is also the problem of online bots or hackers, or even just the spread of disinformation, which may lead to new challenges in using VGI for research.
A variety of ethical concerns should be addressed when conducting analysis that incorporates VGI. Crawford and Finn pose important questions to consider, including the role that people in a disaster have in deciding how their data is used, questions of consent, and what privacy means in different instances (pg 492). There are also questions of ethics surrounding the power relationship and dynamics between those providing the information, and the groups that perform analysis and suggest policy. This ethical limitation can be ameliorated by working to incorporate elements of critical data studies. Outside the world of big data, geospatial studies of hazard and risk can be improved by looking to incorporate other forms of data collection, including interviews and participatory studies.
Crawford, K., and M. Finn. 2014. The limits of crisis data: analytical and ethical challenges of using social and mobile data to understand disasters. GeoJournal 80 (4):491–502. DOI:10.1007/s10708-014-9597-z
Readings for the Week: Wang, Z., X. Ye, and M. H. Tsou. 2016. Spatial, temporal, and content analysis of Twitter for wildfire hazards. Natural Hazards 83 (1):523–540.