Using Geodata and Geolocation in the Social Sciences: Mapping our Connected World
By David Abernathy
Sage Publishing
326 pages
$27.42 (via Amazon.com on 11/29/17)
Reviewed by Sean Little
Geodata refers to the linkage of mobile phones, the internet, and satellite-based geographic information systems (GIS). Like other forms of “Big Data”, people generate geodata through their actions on the Internet. About 75 percent of this book consists of hands-on exercises using open-source software. I found these exercises to be the most valuable part.
Geodata can facilitate evaluation many ways. Open-source software exists that allows anyone to plot these locations on the map. Tweets can contain geolocation data. Google Fusion Tables,as well as the US Census, provide maps on which people can plot data.
Geodata has advantages for evaluating localized social marketing campaigns. Social media geodata offer a new tool for use in needs assessments. Environmental researchers have implanted Global Positioning System (GPS) devices in fish, birds, and animals. These devices allow the researchers to measure migration and health.
While I found these exercises relatively easy to follow, on several occasions,I had to rely on my stubbornness to complete an exercise. The absence of a “live” teacher/mentor, available for answering questions, was tolerable, if challenging.
Many of us gained mastery of software dealing with similar challenges. Some of us learned how to use software this way. Others find it extremely frustrating. These exercises will be most useful for those people who view this type of experience as a challenge. Others may find it frustrating.
The exercises use only open-source or free software. Open-source software lacks the institutional support of proprietary software. While open-source software may have a steep learning curve, it is free. Evaluators with access to large, stable budgets can use SPSS, SAS, and other proprietary software. Small consulting groups and non-profits rely on open-source software or MS Office.
Serious questions exist about the external validity of geodata. As people self-select to produce geodata, its relationship to larger populations is questionable. Geodata over-represents those connected by technology, and may over-represent the young. The “digital divide,” however, is decreasing, not increasing.
Critical populations can be hard to access and can lack sampling frames.According to anecdotal reports, African-Americans have high use of Twitter. This has even generated a label, “Black Twitter”. A google search for that term produced 1,290,000 results. Black Twitter has its own hashtag and a Wikipedia entry. Reportedly, people organized the Fergusson protests using Twitter. While this requires proof, the analysis of Tweets may be an easy and inexpensive way to study this population. Geodata on Twitter could localize those Tweets.
Perfect data collection either does not exist or is prohibitively expensive. Some data takes so long to collect that it reflects the past. Geodata, like big data, has many advantages. Subject recruitment, data collection, and data input have no cost to either researchers or participants. Without data collection and input, turnaround time increases. This minimizes the decay of data-value as that data ages. All data has limitations, we have to be aware of the limitations of each methodology.
A UN report, “The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age”, has raised ethical objections to the unexamined use of Internet data. Others have questions the ethics of researchers using internet data. Researchers are not the only ones using this data. Corporations, the NSA, and other government agencies, use this data without transparency or accountability. The most ethical position might be to educate people that no expectation of privacy on social media should exist. After all, it is social media, not private media.
According to Abernathy, relatively affordable mobile technology has democratized data collection. In the past, only the powerful had access to cartography. Now cartography has become available to anyone by inputting “google.com/maps.” Abernathy refers to this as the development of “citizen cartographers.”Citizens can now monitor activities of the government or large corporations. For example, people have used cell phones to videotape police shooting unarmed African-Americans. This helps to democratize “accountability.”
Despite Abernathy's sensitivity to surveillance issues, he made a serious error. In the exercises, he asked people to search well-known locations. These locations included sensitive sites such as the White House and 10 Downing Street. I was not sure what searches for these sites could trigger, but I did not want to find out. I searched for less sensitive locations instead.
Methodology books will never make any best-seller list but professors can assign this text to them. A Muslim student cyber searching for the White House and 10 Downing Street could face serious consequences.
This book provides an excellent introduction to an emerging methodology. The exercises allow the learner to experience the methodology. Abernathy’s use of open-source software removes financial barriers for low-income students and small independent consulting firms. With a few caveats, this is a very useful book.
Full disclosure: Long before I read this book, I had turned off the geolocation settings on my cell phone. Some of us like to be “off the grid.” Reading this book failed to motivate me to turn them on, but I am now unsure exactly how “off the grid” I am.