[OSM-Science] New paper: "Cartographic Vandalism in the Era of Location-Based Games—The Case of OpenStreetMap and Pokémon GO"

[Levente Juhász]

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to point out that we recently published a paper about
"cartographic vandalism"  titled "Cartographic Vandalism in the Era of
Location-Based Games—The Case of OpenStreetMap and Pokémon GO". We analyze
the spatial, temporal and semantic characteristics of Pokemon vandalism in
a data-driven fashion. I thought some of you might find it useful and
interesting. The article is open access. Abstract and link to the full text
is below.

Cheers,
Levente

Juhász, L.; Novack, T.; Hochmair, H.H.; Qiao, S. Cartographic Vandalism in
the Era of Location-Based Games—The Case of OpenStreetMap and Pokémon
GO. *ISPRS
Int. J. Geo-Inf*. 2020, 9, 197.

https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/9/4/197

Abstract
User-generated map data is increasingly used by the technology industry for
background mapping, navigation and beyond. An example is the integration of
OpenStreetMap (OSM) data in widely-used smartphone and web applications,
such as Pokémon GO (PGO), a popular augmented reality smartphone game. As a
result of OSM’s increased popularity, the worldwide audience that uses OSM
through external applications is directly exposed to malicious edits which
represent cartographic vandalism. Multiple reports of obscene and
anti-semitic vandalism in OSM have surfaced in popular media over the
years. These negative news related to cartographic vandalism undermine the
credibility of collaboratively generated maps. Similarly, commercial map
providers (e.g., Google Maps and Waze) are also prone to carto-vandalism
through their crowdsourcing mechanism that they may use to keep their map
products up-to-date. Using PGO as an example, this research analyzes
harmful edits in OSM that originate from PGO players. More specifically,
this paper analyzes the spatial, temporal and semantic characteristics of
PGO carto-vandalism and discusses how the mapping community handles it. Our
findings indicate that most harmful edits are quickly discovered and that
the community becomes faster at detecting and fixing these harmful edits
over time. Gaming related carto-vandalism in OSM was found to be a
short-term, sporadic activity by individuals, whereas the task of fixing
vandalism is persistently pursued by a dedicated user group within the OSM
community. The characteristics of carto-vandalism identified in this
research can be used to improve vandalism detection systems in the future
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/science/attachments/20200518/5d140fc9/attachment.htm>