Hacks, Fakes, and Hot Takes: Moderating “bad actors” on Google Maps Local Guides Platform

Noone, Rebecca; Bhandari, Aparajita

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117213 Copy

Description

Title

Hacks, Fakes, and Hot Takes: Moderating “bad actors” on Google Maps Local Guides Platform

Author(s)

• Noone, Rebecca
• Bhandari, Aparajita

Issue Date

2024

Keyword(s)

• Local Guides
• Google Maps
• Misinformation
• Reviews
• Discourse analysis
• Content moderation
• Location-based data

Geographic Coverage

Canada

Abstract

Reading or writing online user-reviews of places like a restaurant or a hair salon is a common information practice. Through its Local Guides Platform, Google calls on users to add reviews of places directly to Google Maps, and invites users to edit store hours and report “fake” reviews. This chapter examines the governance structures that delineate the role Local Guides’ play in regulating the Google Maps information ecosystem. Based on a critical discourse analysis of the platform, we identify how the Local Guides Platform characterizes misinformation as an exterior threat infiltrating Google Maps’ global mapping project. Framing our analysis through Kuo and Marwick’s (2021) critique of the dominant misinformation paradigm – one often based on hegemonic ideals of truth and authenticity— we argue that review and moderation practices on Local Guides further standardize constructions of misinformation as the product of a small group of outlier “bad actors'' in an otherwise convivial information ecosystem. Instead, we consider how the platform’s governance of crowdsourced moderation, paired with the Google Maps’ project of creating a single, universal map, help to homogenize narratives of space that then further normalize the limited scope of Google’s misinformation paradigm.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Series/Report Name or Number

Cambridge Studies on Governing Knowledge Commons

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Sponsor(s)/Grant Number(s)

• NSF: SES
• Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences
• #2017495

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