Maps, world-views and neutrality: squaring the circle?

Pint of Science 2025 | Dirty Duck, Coventry

Carlos Cámara-Menoyo | Timothy Monteath

Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick)

Carlos Cámara-Menoyo

Senior Research Software Engineer

carlos.camara@warwick.ac.uk

@ccamara.scholar.social

@ccamara.scholar.social.ap.brid.gy

Timothy Monteath

Assistant Professor

Timothy.monteath@warwick.ac.uk

@twm.mastodon.sdf.org

@twm.bsky.social

Hello, we are Carlos Cámara and Tim Monteath, and today we are going to talk about something we are both passionate for: maps, and specifically about their relationship with how we see and shape the world.

Are maps objective?

Let’s start with a warm up question: “do you think that maps are objective?” Please, raise your hands if you think that’s the case.

It’s a fair assumption. We use maps for plenty of things and that may have been our experience so far.

Now, does this image change your mind?

As you know, one of the first things Trump did when in power was to rename the gulf of mexico to gulf of America, and companies like Google have followed to update their maps accordingly.

Map-making

In any case, to properly answer this question, we need to understand how maps are made and who makes them, and this is what Tim is going to explain.

How are maps made?

1. Geodesy

Is what figuring out where things are and how to record them. Focus is on mathematical foundations (coordinates, Earth’s shape).

This was once a huge scientific enterprise, today this is done by satellite and most of us, even very specialist geographers don’t have to think about it very much.

Keywords: precision, geolocation, GPS, LIDAR, coordinates system…

2. Cartogrpahy

Is how we visualize information about things in the world on maps .

The history of cartography is long and detailed, and the question of what was mapped by whom has dramatically shaped the modern world.

Keywords: projections, shapes, size, colour…

For the sake of simplicity, we are going to summarise the process of making maps into two processes: 1. Positioning data 2. Displaying data

Who makes maps?

Governments

Motivation: public service

Official maps

• Ordnance Survey
• NASA

Companies

Motivation: Business model.

• Google, Microsoft, Apple…
• ESRI, Carto
• …

Specific, detailed maps, related to their business model.

Individuals!

Motivation: diverse Coverage and precision: diverse

• OpenStreetMap, “the wikipedia of the maps”
• …

Are maps objective?

Each map involves a series of decisions that are anything but objective

Projections

No projection is perfect! Projection is an ‘unsolvable problem’ in that however we do it we are going to end up with some distortion somewhere on our map.

The first decision we must make before we can even map anything is what projection we are going to use.

A projection, is how we turn the the 3D globe of the earth into the 2D plane of map we see on a peice of paper or a a screen.

No projection is perfect! Projection is an ‘unsolvable problem’ in that however we do it we are going to end up with some distortion somewhere on our map.

What is included (and what is not!)

OSM Carto: a General Purpose style

OSM Public transport layer

OSM Public transport layer

All maps must make decisions about what is included and what is not.

After all, If we were to add everything in a map, it would be as complex as the Earth, and therefore not useful.

Or take the example of a crime map. Usually expressed in maps like this. Without any context, as it crime simply happens in some places. How would the story change if displayed public investment, too …or worse, ethnicity?

Orientation and alignment

The Earth, as seen from outer space

So what?

Maps and power

All maps are political and anything but neutral:

• They follow a political agenda
• Prone to (unconcious) bias

Either way, they influence/impact other people’s lifes, especially in less privileged/underrepresented population:

• Origin/Geography
• Gender
• Sexual orientation…

There’s a long history of maps and power

British Empire in 1886. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Our research

Can Digital Goods Be Neutral?

Evaluating OpenStreetMap’s equity through participatory data visualisation

Motivation

We wanted to understand how these decisions around mapping were impacting under-represented communities.

We wanted to study a particular type of digital good: OpenStreetMap, to understand how neutrality is used to favour or hamper equity.

Katherine d’Ignazio and Lauren Klein’s Data feminism design principles

Kowing about all of this, and inspired by the work of feminist geographers and d’Ignazio and Lauren data feminism principles, we wanted to understand whether these decisions decisions had a positive or negative impact in under-represented communities.

OpenStreetMap (OSM)

OSM is the largest and most exhaustive collaborative map of the world.

OSM is a map

OSM is a database

We have already mentioned OSM as the wikipedia of the maps

We know already that OSM is a collaborative map, but it is also a database, and because all their items are geo-located, we call it a “geospatial” database.

OSM’s data, contributed by 10,000,000 volunteers,

complements official data sources, and

populates thousands of tools and services.

Major Sites: Amazon, Apple, Baidu Maps, Facebook, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Wikimedia

Transport: Air France, Alaska Airlines, Deutsche Bahn, Grab, SNCF (French rail agency), Uber, Geodata Software and Services: CARTO, Digital Globe, ESRI, Garmin, Mapbox, Telenav

Government: Agence Française de Développement, Government of Brazil, Government of Italy: President’s Office, Police Scotland, US National Park Service, US State Department, USAID, Peace Corps….

OSM is huge and is everywhere!

Like Wikipedia, OSM is based

on principles of openness and neutrality

“OpenStreetMap maps world as it exists, and includes mapping borders and countries according to actual current situation and not a preferred or ideal situation” (OSM Wiki)

What?

• Is OSM as neutral as it claims to be?
• How is the notion of neutrality being implemented?
• How is ‘neutrality’ affecting other, underrepresented demographics?

How?

Participatory research: teaming with GeoChicas to codesign data visualisations

GeoChicas is a collective of feminist women linked to OpenStreetMap, originally Spanish-speaking, who work for women’s empowerment and the reduction of the gender gap in OpenStreetMap communities and in communities associated with the world of free software and open data.

Data visualisations as a method to:

• think about data (and representation)
• communicate and surface controversies

Understanding community composition

Results are not representative, but significative: show a clear over-representation of certain demographics.

We’ve created visualisations like this to understand how heterogeneous is or is not

How do users contribute to OSM?

A dashboard showing how groups contribute to OSM

Initial findings show differences in how women contribute to OSM.

We’ve created a dashboard showing how a group of users contribute to OSM so we can compare how similar or different are the contributions patterns of certain users.

Inclusive cartographies

Planning a series of workhops aimed at creating maps that address particular needs of underrepresented minorities using data that is available in OpenStreetMap

Prompts:

• Aim: what would you want the map to help you with?

• Iconography: how are the icons being used?

• Information being displayed or not: what do you want to be seen? How would you like it to be represented?

Audience:

• People from non-hegemonic demographics (women, racialized, LGTBQ+) who feel that current maps do not sufficiently address their needs.

• Map enthusiasts, Data visualization enthusiasts and OpenStreetMap users with a keen interest in EDI issues.

• Activists, Researchers, or people sensitive to EDI issues and inequalities (we will particularly welcome people interested in issues related to gender, race or queer topics).

You are invited!

WEB Dubois map of Philadelphia

Kelly 2020

Some findings

• Bias in OSM’s contributors -> It is expected that it may influence how they contribute to the map -> and how the map looks like.

• Awareness in OSM, but not much has done.

• Difficult tension:

  • OSM universalists aspiration collides with feminist approaches that advocate for taking into account context and relations

Takeaways

• No map is perfect. No map is neutral. No map is finished.

• OpenStreetMap is not an exception to this, but it is a cool project.

  • Join it and use it! -> https://openstreetmap.org

• Our research aims to understand OSM better and contribute to make it more equitable.

  • Join us!