Feminist geographies of new spatial media

Abstract

Critical GIS emphasized the ways in which social, political, and economic inequalities are (re)produced through spatial information technologies and attendant practices. In the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, feminist interventions challenged the presumed gender neutrality and universality of GIS and brought gender to the fore of Critical GIS concerns. However, the rise of nascent web-based spatial information technologies - or new spatial media - signals the need to extend this work to determine how it is that gender matters differently in this newly diversified, pervasive, and public context of geographic information technologies. Building on an analysis of online commentaries and an assessment of the functions and promotional material of several illustrative applications, we argue that gender continues to "matter" vis-à-vis new spatial media in three key dimensions: i) new practices of data creation and curation; ii) affordances of new technologies; and iii) new digital spatial mediations of everyday life.