Mapping Digital Landscape Narratives: exploring the use of social media as a passive form of community engagement in landscape architecture - a case study of the Festival du Voyageur

Abstract

This practicum develops the concept of Mapping Digital Landscape Narratives. It is an exploration of the use of social media as a passive form of community engagement in landscape architecture. Digital landscape narratives are stories about places that are created collectively by various agents, including people, groups, organizations and communities through the Internet and the use of social media. A case study of the Festival du Voyageur in Winnipeg, Manitoba is used to explore the potential of social media as a tool in planning and design. This practicum explores the importance of social media to participatory culture. An understanding of landscape narratives is developed, and contemporary forms of representation are explored. The document explores three forms of data including original social media data, such as photographs and videos, metadata such as hashtags and locations, and social network data, which is created when people interact on social media. Research into mapping, social network analysis and online privacy outline best practices for researchers and designers of public space. A study of the Festival du Voyageur’s programming, along with an interview with the festival’s planning staff, establishes a conventional data set that outlines the festival on a city scale, a neighborhood scale, and the scale of the festival grounds. Social media data from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are mapped and analyzed to create a complimentary data set. Ultimately an overall complex narrative is developed describing the festival from various points of view at various locations.