In this new article, written with fellow geographer Stefano De Sabbata, we explore the relationship between spatial user-generated content from Twitter, Foursquare, OpenStreetMap, and Wikipedia and socio-economic variables in Los Angeles County [read the full paper in PDF]. All the data and resources are freely available on GitHub. Abstract: Online representations of places are becoming pivotal in informing our … Continue reading Los Angeles as a digital place: mapping bias in user-generated content
Category: publications
Assessing the Usability of Participatory GIS
In this new article, my colleagues of the SeaSketch team, Werner Kuhn, and I developed a questionnaire to evaluate the usability of participatory GIS [read the full paper in PDF]. The article was nominated as Best Full Paper at AGILE 2019. All the data and resources are freely available on GitHub. Abstract: Since its emergence in the 1990s, … Continue reading Assessing the Usability of Participatory GIS
Tracing Search Geographies with Google Trends: 6 lessons learnt
In a new article that will be presented at AGILE later this year, my colleagues Simon Scheider, Bas Spierings, and I explore the potential of Google Trends to understand how the search interest in geographic areas changes in space and time, looking at the Amsterdam metropolitan region as a case study [read the full paper … Continue reading Tracing Search Geographies with Google Trends: 6 lessons learnt
Where are celebrities from? New York Yankees and Hollywood Anglos
In a new paper with my colleague Eric Kaufmann, we used a crowdsourced dataset from Ethnicelebs.com to study, among other things, when and where American celebrities from diverse backgrounds anglicise their names to adhere to a WASP ideal. For example, action-movie actor of Catholic Lithuanian heritage Charles Dennis Buchinsky changed his surname to Bronson not to … Continue reading Where are celebrities from? New York Yankees and Hollywood Anglos
A Context Frame for Interactive Maps
Demo: https://andrea-ballatore.github.io/map-context-frame Digital maps are ubiquitous, supporting countless online activities. Most interactive mapping platforms support three user operations to move across space: zooming in, zooming out, and panning. While using interactive maps, it is common for users to land in an unfamiliar area at high zoom levels. To understand the location of the area, users … Continue reading A Context Frame for Interactive Maps
Moving to open access in GIScience
See also my list of open access resources for GIScience. Open access is coming. The radical European Plan S is just the latest of major pushes to reform the current expensive and irrational model. Since the second half of the 20th century, academic authors have usually published without fees, while a handful of private publishers reap handsome … Continue reading Moving to open access in GIScience
Digital Earth as a myth
This article was originally published as The myth of the Digital Earth between fragmentation and wholeness in Wi: Journal of Mobile Culture, 2014, 8(2). 1–20. I feel that an updated version is needed to keep track of how the relentless digitisation of the surface of the planet is talked about and imagined by different groups. #media … Continue reading Digital Earth as a myth
