Advocacy mashups harness power of mapping

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“People looking at these sites need to start with a certain level of skepticism,” Gillmor said.

Ben Welsh, of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit that conducts investigative journalism, encountered a similar concern when the organization published "Wasting Away," an online series about Superfund sites.

“The mashup can very powerfully suggest causation between two variables. Just like any other journalistic tool, these things need to be presented responsibly,” Welsh said.

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The series features a mashup of Anniston, Alabama, a small town where a PCB manufacturing plant discharged contaminated wastewater into streams, ditches and landfills for 40 years(http://www.publicintegrity.org/superfund). Clicking on one of the map’s blue pushpins brings up an embedded YouTube video of an Anniston resident discussing the impact of pollution on his or her life. One even suggests a link between local diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular-related deaths and the toxic waste.

Steve Carpinelli, a media relations manager for the Center for Public Integrity, wrote in an e-mail that the article accompanying the video was “thoroughly fact-checked sentence by sentence” and added that the video interviews did not contradict the expert opinions the reporting team had gathered.

While advocates argue that mashups promote transparency and accountability, there is the potential that an ever-watching eye may clash with notions of privacy. Mapping Shari’a is a mashup project sponsored by the Society of Americans for National Existence, a right-wing organization concerned with national security. In the next year, they aim to visit the nation’s 2,300 Islamic mosques and schools in an effort to ascertain whether jihad is being taught.

David Yerushalmi, the organization’s president and founder, declined to discuss the protocols for compiling information, but said that his team will consider, among other factors, clothing and the content discussed in the religious services, in determining the threat level of each mosque and school.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said on its Web site that the project was tantamount to spying on the country’s Islamic institutions. Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for CAIR, expected the final product to promote anti-Muslim sentiment.

“I’m not exactly hopeful that what they’ll come up will be objective or remotely truthful,” he said.

Undoubtedly, the widespread availability of Google Earth Outreach will result in more technologically sophisticated mashups and an increased focus on political and social issues. Mashups of this strain could turn the average citizen into a first responder, citizen journalist, vigilant observer or spy.

“They have a visceral impact whether you’re telling a story through journalism or trying to provoke a response,” said Welsh. “They have more potency than a red dot on a map.”

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