OpenStreetMap in the changing context of digital capitalism. Open Geospatial Data in tension between private appropriation and digital commons

A considerable body of research on OpenStreetMap (OSM) has already been published. OSM is a community-based project founded in 2004 with the objective of collecting geospatial data and making it freely available. Following its early success in the late 2000s, the project attracted significant interest from researchers, who both used it as a data source and analyzed the quality and coverage of the data. Critical social science research soon began to focus on the project and its contributors, the community. The concept of “volunteered geographic information” (VGI) initially played an important role, as it represented an important innovation, to the extent that participation in a web project such as OSM was possible for everyone. However, this perspective was met with criticism, as the project faced significant barriers and participation remained unequal, unfair, and not “democratic” in practice, despite its stated intentions. During this period, some researchers began to explore in depth the socio-technical functioning of the OSM project. However, there is a significant research gap in the analysis of how OSM is embedded in the social, political, and economic contexts that are crucial to the project. In this context, it is also important to note the paucity of critical social science research on the extent to which OSM is comparable with other digital projects from the early 2000s that still exist today. While OSM has been compared with other geospatial data projects, such as Wikimapia, it is crucial to acknowledge that the situation has evolved significantly since the early 2010s, marked by the accelerated rise of “digital capitalism.” In this context, the primary focus of my work is on techno-capitalist platforms and the companies behind them, which increasingly determine everyday life and economic functioning in the current phase of digital capitalism. My research therefore examines the following overarching question: How is the OSM project changing in the evolving context of digital capitalism? Specifically, the study explores the extent to which commercial entities influenced the OSM initiative during the late 2010s and early 2020s. Additionally, it investigates OSM’s unique attributes, which enable it to either compete or coexist with these substantial economic actors. These research findings also offer the chance to derive strategies for the success of other projects. In addition to being embedded in current research on techno-capitalist platforms and digital capitalism, work on the commons and digital commons is particularly important for answering these questions, as their functional form has proven to be a fruitful concept for considering the functioning of OSM and similar projects. A substantial addition to my research is, firstly, marked by the integration of literature on platform and digital capitalism with geospatial data, which I categorize as a contribution to critical geospatial data studies. Secondly, addressing the question of political-economic embedding reveals a research deficit concerning the appropriation of (geospatial) data. Thirdly, the political relevance of open collaboration projects such as OSM is still under-researched. Although open source data is already being recognized as a data source by some municipal and supranational authorities, considerable untapped potential remains in the realm of geospatial data and OSM for the sharing of emerging data and other tools. In my work, which is primarily qualitative in its methodological approach, but which also incorporates quantitative data analysis, I first examine the actors and practices active in the geospatial data field both within and outside OSM. Secondly, I assess the consequences of these actors and practices and the resulting conditions for the OSM project and its ecosystem. I utilize Rosa's methodological approach of “code ethnography” (Rosa, 2022), which extends classical qualitative methods and combines ethnographic work with technical code and the functionality of digital infrastructures. Consequently, I describe the inclusion of large institutional actors in OSM and the associated integration of new socio-technical mapping techniques. The analysis also illuminates the intricate relationship between OSM and the prominent geospatial service provider Google Maps, as well as the newly established Overture Maps Foundation initiative, which was founded in 2022. In the context of this analysis, OSM is identified as an increasingly diverse and global project that is actively engaged in issues of knowledge production. While the integration of big institutional actors has been demonstrated to foster diversity and globality, this analysis also reveals a risk of marginalizing worldviews and mapping techniques and the potential extraction of existing knowledge and private appropriation of data due to dominant voices. These actors may include established mappers from the Global North or large commercial entities. Finally, the concept of the digital commons is applied to the OSM project, and the potential for bringing the project closer to state actors is examined using the example of the European Union. In my discussion, I conclude that OSM is not only deeply embedded in political-economic structures, but that digital capitalism is also fundamentally dependent on alternatives such as commons-based projects, even if these are constantly threatened by enclosure. Nevertheless, I suggest that open collaboration projects such as OSM are rather exceptional. Notably, OSM remains largely uninfluenced by commercial entities, a trait that is increasingly rare in the advanced stages of digital capitalism. This observation demonstrates the capacity of alternatives to the prevailing capitalist system to establish and sustain themselves in the face of obstacles and competition. OSM was not initiated by companies but by volunteers who are now increasingly interacting with private sector actors. More prevalent, by contrast, are corporate-led projects that have been made available to an open collaborative community by their commercial company of origin. In this context, the present work can contribute to the relatively under-researched field of critical geospatial data studies by providing significant insights into the transformation of economic and socio-technical structures in the field of geospatial data. This is exemplified by three observations: First, the work shows that a unique confluence of different factors enabled the emergence of projects such as OSM. This factor can also be referred to as momentum. Second, this research contributes to the ongoing discourse on the commodification of open collaboration projects. The true accomplishment of projects such as Wikipedia and OSM lies in circumventing market exploitation. The success of OSM in particular stems from its ability to assert itself in the context of the prevailing and increasingly assertive logic of exploitation of digital platforms. Third, the empirical analysis demonstrates that the OSM project must be regarded as an increasingly political form of resistance to commercial appropriation. Although OSM was initially founded against the backdrop of a certain anti-statism, the project cannot be viewed independently of either state or capitalist logics. Instead, OSM should be understood as part of a triangle of state regulation, capitalism, and the (digital) commons.