Posts by Mark Graham

About Mark Graham

Mark Graham is the Professor of Internet Geography at the OII, a Faculty Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, and an Associate in the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment. He leads a range of research projects spanning topics between digital labour, the gig economy, internet geographies, and ICTs and development.

The Impact of Connectivity in Africa: Grand Visions and the Mirage of Inclusive Digital Development

20 October 2016 0

My colleagues Nicolas Friederici, Sanna Ojanperä, and I have recently finished a paper in which we analyse ‘Grand Visions’ of how Internet connectivity affects development in Africa. In the paper, we contrast these visions with the actually available empirical evidence to support those claims. You will be able to read our full conclusions in the paper below: Friederici, N.… Read More: The Impact of Connectivity in Africa: Grand Visions and the… »

Mapping Flickr

3 October 2016 1

Flickr is one of the world’s most popular photo sharing websites, and represents a key way in which people form impressions about different parts of our planet. In other words it is an important part of the digital augmentations of places. Antonello Romano has been doing some great work mapping content from the site, and… Read More: Mapping Flickr »

The geography of Wikipedia edits

28 September 2016 0

Wikipedia has a geography. This is something that my colleagues and I have explored previously in a variety of scholarship. For a new book on ‘Open Development’, my colleague Stefano De Sabbata and I decided to update our most recent paper about information geographies with the above maps of Wikipedia. The basic underlying inequalities haven’t changed. Using… Read More: The geography of Wikipedia edits »

Digital\\\Human\\\Labour **Call for papers at the 2017 AAG meeting**

6 September 2016 0

Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting. April 5-9, 2017, Boston, MA The proposed Digital Geographies Working Group of the RGS/IBG and the proposed Digital Geographies Specialty Group of the AAG would like to invite submissions to a series of paper sessions and panels for the 2017 meeting of the American Association of… Read More: Digital\\\Human\\\Labour **Call for papers at the 2017 AAG meeting** »

Digital work marketplaces impose a new balance of power

27 May 2016 0

Factories can’t run, farms can’t produce, mines can’t be mined, supermarkets can’t be stocked, and call centres can’t accept calls if workers don’t go to work. Even though the decks are often stacked against workers, the basic fact that workers can withdraw their labour with strikes, and encourage others to do so with picket lines,… Read More: Digital work marketplaces impose a new balance of power »

New publication – Using Geotagged Digital Social Data in Geographic Research

17 May 2016 0

This chapter outlines how one might utilize the massive amounts of web-based, geographically-referenced digital social data for geographical research. Because much of these data are user-generated and produced through social media platforms, we also focus on the pitfalls associated with such sources and the benefits of a mixed methods approach to these data. Not only… Read More: New publication – Using Geotagged Digital Social Data in Geographic… »

Organising in the “digital wild west”: Can strategic bottlenecks help prevent a race to the bottom for online workers?

11 May 2016 0

For decades, large firms have been outsourcing and offshoring jobs. Work flowed from developed economies to developing ones, where wages were lower and regulations were of a lighter touch. Europeans and North Americans lost jobs, and Asians, South Americans, and Africans gained them. But the nature of these processes meant that business activities had to… Read More: Organising in the “digital wild west”: Can strategic bottlenecks help… »

Reconsidering the Role of the Digital in Global Production Networks (new paper)

13 April 2016 0

Chris Foster and I have a new publication that will be coming out in Global Networks: Foster, C. and Graham, M. 2016. Reconsidering the Role of the Digital in Global Production Networks. Global Networks. DOI: 10.1111/glob.12142 (pre-publication version here). Abstract: Global production networks (GPN) has become a key framework in conceptualising linkages, power and structure… Read More: Reconsidering the Role of the Digital in Global Production Networks… »