Emergence of geovigilantes and geographic information ethics in the web 2.0 Era

The current technical evolution has enabled GIS as a tool for social participation, empowerment, and public involvement. Public citizens become acclimatized to voluntarily participate in regional policy planning, local governance and crisis mapping. However, it also brings the consequences that people can casually participate in mapping behaviour without being aware of their position of power in creating geographic information without knowledge of cartography or ethics. Thus, the premise that such net-rooted and undisciplined people do what experts expect of them no longer applies. In this paper, based on the literature on online activism and digital vigilantism, the author introduces the notion of geovigilantism and highlights the necessity of developing geographic information ethics for PGIS in the Web 2.0 era by referring to two types of recent online cyberbullying incidents. Because technology-aided ubiquitous mapping is difficult to see or grasp, especially for those not educated and trained to see it, these advances prompt people to lower technical and ethical barriers. Further studies are essential to establish geographic information ethics and address this newly emerging problem.