With the evolution of the Geoweb, or rather Web 2.0, different forms of participation from citizens have arisen, some vastly different from traditional methods. The definition of participation was vague to begin with, but with the advancements of the geoweb, this definition has become even more abstract. It allows for a much larger audience to be heard, but is this really the step that we want to take? I can see the argument from both sides. On one hand, giving so many people access to some form of media, or dataset, which allows them to participate and share their own data on the web results in more data that has ever been available. You would think that this should be a good thing, and that anything suspicious, or simply incorrect wouldn’t survive the criticism of the rest of the geoweb, however in most cases, this simply does not happen. Many non-experts allow such information to propagate under the false pretenses that they are in fact experts. This is where such access can be dangerous. If anybody has the ability to simply “participate”, they can influence others into seeing their view, story or data set in a sculpted viewpoint. Inadvertent or not, the geoweb allows anybody with the access to internet, and a medium such as social media to have a large effect on what kind of data propagates through the geoweb.
This kind of participation is unavoidable in the era that we live in, however traditional methods of participation should not be neglected as one would think that they would be more credible than any random self proclaimed “Joe” contributing via Facebook.
Buzz