Exclusions in volunteered geographic information (VGI) - renewal proposal: Geodata from local experts? An examination of the assumption of localness in VGI by analysing the example of OpenStreetMap (OSM)

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Volunteered geographic information (VGI), that is to say, the voluntary and non-paid collection of geodata within the interactive web 2.0, has been interpreted as a chance for giving marginalized voices access to the compilation and dissemination of geographic information. However, the idea that within the web 2.0 everybody could participate in the fabrication of geographic information has been rapidly questioned, pointing to the different social and socio-technical forms of exclusion. Yet, despite the rapidly growing importance of VGI for different fields, up to now there are only few and hardly any systematic empirical studies on the social and socio-technical backgrounds of VGI. This is the starting point for our research project which aims to reconstruct the fabrication of collaboratively assembled geodata. The project intends to uncover processes of marginalisation and exclusion and thus to analyse how social inequalities are inscribed in VGI and become reproduced through VGI. As a case study we look at the globally most popular projects of a collaboratively collected geodata bases, OpenStreetMap (OSM) and WikiMapia, within a regional context which is due to the multiple social disparities and political conflict lines particularly informative and empirically fertile: Israel/Palestine.