I'm a geographer and I'm deeply concerned about how online social media like Facebook Twitter Wikipedia and Yelp are changing our views of the world around us each of these forms of social media creates content that is ranked and filtered in a way that narrows our worldview I'm here tonight to talk to you about how this filtering changes our perception of the places around us based on who's contributing the data and where the data is located each of these forms of social media creates a geotag small bit of data that's associated with a location on the Earth's surface and each time we say update our Facebook profile to include a location maybe check-in at a restaurant on Yelp or read a Wikipedia article that includes a historical event or description of a place each time we do that we interact with this layer of spatial data that covers the Earth's surface unfortunately this layer of data is not evenly distributed it's quite clumpy in some places you can see the map behind me as a special type of map called a cartogram where the size of each square represents how many geo tagged articles are in that country but on the map behind me you might also notice that there's extreme inequalities in the distribution of this information that almost 70% seventeenth almost three-quarters of the world's content originates in the United States and Europe alone so you have to wonder how useful is an encyclopedia that claims to be the sum of all world knowledge when all of the knowledge in the entire continent of South America the entire continent of Africa sums up to be less the amount of knowledge in France Google suffers from the same inequalities again almost 70% of all of the world's geo-referenced information comes from two countries alone the United States and Germany so you have to wonder what type of world view are we seeing when we use Google to learn about the world around us Flickr is the largest repository of geotagged images in the world we use Flickr to understand and visualize other places in the world but Flickr similarly suffers from the same problem we're on the map behind me you might notice that China Iran and the Nigerian Delta heavily populated places are absent from the map they're absent largely because of censorship internal competing platforms and the digital divide that means people are not accessing and contributing information in the same way so if Google is trying to build a virtual mirror of the world at all times through their locational services we have to wonder what is reflected in this mirror that Google is showing us with wonder whose world view and whose perceptions are we seeing in 2005 Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans when this happened this was the first time we were able to see how the digital inequalities online are replicating the material inequalities that exist within our society we were able to see that in the Lower Ninth Ward the poorest and least white part of the city which was severely damaged by the storm had very few geo tags documenting the damage the devastation and the displacement of the people who lived there we were able not able to see the same amount of information about this area that we were about its wealthier and whiter counterparts in the city as our Maps become mobile and integrate with the smart and social functions of our cell phones these problems do not disappear in fact they're exacerbated they're exacerbated by our social networks by our social media and by our maps surrounding us and identifying our location at all times so Google requests that volunteers and rich the map and you all contribute your own local knowledge and the places that matter to you to the map we aren't doing that so much women I've noticed will tag the social relationships on their Facebook they will identify friends in pictures or in status updates but they will not geo tagged images they will not geo tagged locations that they visited as they're more concerned about privacy when this relates to the map we can start to realize who updates the map with their local knowledge and contributes their information the map creators that volunteer information are 93% men the regional expert reviewers who stand in as the gatekeepers of local knowledge and review those changes to the map made by the volunteer editors those reviewers are 96% male so we have to wonder whose perspective is it that we're seeing on the map and whose perspective is virtually missing so Google's proprietary search algorithm is Oh is changing in 2011 Google introduced their social search function so no longer is that just your personal click history and your location that changes where what appears through their ranking and filtering now it's your social contacts those contacts that Google can identify through your email or gchat your online social networks now Google is using those to determine the ranking and filtering of your results to test how this plays out on the map I asked my conservative friend or ik a retired colonel commander in the u.s. Navy what does freedom look like on your map so when Eric did a search for freedom he was able to see a cleaning service he was able to see a church and a health care clinic on my map freedom meant freedom from hunger freedom from human trafficking and freedom and peace party when I asked Eric what his humble look like on your map he looked at it he said it's a church there's an investment opportunity when on my map humbled implied my employer Humboldt State University and implied I might be interested in several social services in the area our maps were different based on our worldview so as we know from Eli parsers filter bubble there are certain risks associated with this automatic filtering and ranking of your results that leads to a sort of auto propaganda where you only see what people who are demographically like you where your own position in the world takes you my fear though is as this travels into our digital maps that what we will see is only the places that we go the places where our friends go where the people who are like us visit my fear is that will lead us to not going and exploring new places it's my fear about maps relates to the spatial personalization algorithms that we are using every day to limit where we go my fear is that we will also not consider who's contributing to the map and whose worldview is being left out I'm worried about this virtual mirror that Google is reflecting back at us and I'm frightened that perhaps we don't like the reflection of our community that we see in this map I'm frightened that this mirror is not showing us the plural view of our society thank you very much you