Dr Mark Graham

Director of Research and Research Fellow

Dr Mark Graham

Mark Graham's research focuses on Internet and information geographies, and the overlaps between ICTs and economic development.

Email: mark.graham@oii.ox.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)1865 287203

Profile

Mark Graham's research focuses on Internet and information geographies, and the overlaps between ICTs and economic development. His work can be divided into three categories:

ICT for Development

Mark is particularly interested in the multiplicity of attempts to implement development and reduce a 'digital divide' by altering economic positionalities and reconfiguring commodity chains in places on the global periphery. He is currently involved in a multi-year project funded by an ESRC-DFID grant to study the effects of broadband use and access in Kenya and Rwanda, asking who benefits (and who doesn’t) from improved connectivity. The ultimate aim of this research is to better understand the variety of strategies employed in using online-presence to offset remote physical presence. Mark’s previous work in this area focused on similar questions within the context of the Thai silk industry. These projects have been supported by the ESRC, the British Academy, the NSF, the Fell Fund, and the American Association of Geographers.

Internet and Information Geographies

Mark's work on the geographies of the Internet examines how people and places are ever more defined by, and made visible through, not only their traditional physical locations and properties, but also their virtual attributes and digital shadows. Specifically, he is interested in how ubiquitous electronic representations of urban environments that are made possible by services and platforms such as Google Maps, Twitter and Wikipedia (e.g. a project on Wikipedia's networks and geographies) have the power to redefine, reconfigure, and reorder the cities that they represent. Of particular interest are the barriers to participation and the way that some people can lack voice and representation in online platforms. This work has been featured in over thirty media outlets around the world (including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Wired) and has been funded by the IDRC and the John Fell Fund. Some of his published academic work on this topic can be found on his website, while more recent work can be accessed on his zerogeography blog and the floatingsheep blog that he co-manages.

Economic Transparency

Novel ways of collaborating and pooling resources are being made possible by a new wave of Internet projects promoting transparency through commodity chains. The central element in these new projects is the ability of non-proximate transparency to effect patterns of consumption and economic flows. Mark's work in this area examines how a variety of social networks and the ability of consumers to monitor distant nodes on production chains can reorganise economic activities. His efforts centre on developing useful frameworks for the effects of non-proximate transparency, as well as detailed empirical studies on multiple transparency-promoting projects. He has recently set up a commodity chain tracing project (Wikichains.org) that will allow people to harness the power of user-generated content to uncover the hidden production practices, environmental effects, and economic geographies behind everyday items.

Office Hours

Mark holds office hours for all OII students between 13:30 and 15:00 every Thursday.

Research interests

Internet Geography, ICT for development, globalization, economic geography, transportation and communications, social theory, transparency, user-generated content, Southeast Asia, East Africa, zombies

Positions held at the OII

  • Director of Research, October 2012 -
  • Research Fellow, October 2009 -

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Research

Current projects

Past projects

  • Interactive Visualizations for Teaching, Research, and Dissemination

    May - September 2012

    "InteractiveVis" aims to support easy creation of interactive visualisations for geospatial and network data by researchers: it will survey existing solutions, build currently missing features, and smooth over incompatibilities between existing libraries.

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Publications

Articles

Chapters

  • Graham, M. (2013) Virtual Geographies and Urban Environments: Big data and the ephemeral, augmented city. In M. Acuto and W. Steele (eds) Global City Challenges: debating a concept, improving the practice. London: Palgrave.
  • Graham, M. (2012) The Knowledge Based Economy and Digital Divisions of Labour. In V.Desai and R.Potter (eds) Companion to Development Studies, 3rd edn. Hodder.
  • Brunn, S., Ghose, R. and Graham, M. (2012) Cities of the Future and the Future of Cities. In S.Brunn, M.Hays-Mitchell and D.Ziegler (eds) Cities of the World, 5th edn. Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 557-597.
  • Graham, M. (2012) The Knowledge Based Economy and Digital Divisions of Labour. In V. Desai, and R. Potter (eds) Companion to Development Studies, 3rd edn. Hodder.
  • Graham, M. (2011) Wiki Space: Palimpsests and the Politics of Exclusion. In: G.Lovink and N.Tkacz (eds) Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
  • Graham, M. and Haarstad, H. (2011) Global Production Patterns. In: J.Stoltman (ed.) 21st Century Geography: A Reference Handbook. London: Sage, pp. 411-421.
  • Graham, M. and Haarstad, H. (2011) Open Development through Open Consumption: The Internet of Things, User-Generated Content and Economic Transparency. In: K.Reilly and M.Smith (eds) Open Development. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Graham, M. (2011) Cultural Brokers, the Internet, and Value Chains. In: F.Wherry and N.Bandelj (eds) The Cultural Wealth of Nations. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 222-239.
  • Graham, M. (2011) Cloud Collaboration: Peer-Production and the Engineering of the Internet. In S.Brunn (ed.) Engineering Earth. New York: Springer, pp. 67-83.
  • Graham, M. (2010) Disintermediation as Development in the Thai Silk Industry: the Internet and Reconfigured Commodity Chains. In: F.Wherry and N.Bandelj (eds) The Cultural Wealth of Nations.
  • Graham, M. (2010) Engineering Earth 2.0: Neogeography and Virtual Earths. In: S.Brunn (ed.) Engineering Earth. New York: Kluwer.
  • Zook, M., Graham, M. and Shelton, T. (2010) The Presidential Placemark Poll. In: S.Brunn (ed.) Atlas of the 2008 Election.
  • Brunn, S., Ghose, R. and Graham, M. (2008) Cities of the Future and the Future of Cities. In: S.Brunn, M.Hays-Mitchell and D.Ziegler (eds) Cities of the World [4th edn]. Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 565-613.
  • Zook, M. and Graham, M. (2007) From Cyberspace to DigiPlace: Visibility in an Age of Information and Mobility. In: H.J.Miller (ed.) Societies and Cities in the Age of Instant Access. Springer, pp. 231-244.
  • Zook, M. and Graham, M. (2006) Wal-Mart Nation: Mapping the Reach of a Retail Colossus. In: S.Brunn (ed.) Wal-Mart World. Routledge, pp. 15-25.

Conference papers

  • Zook, M., Graham, M. and Shelton, T. (2011) Analyzing global cyberscapes: mapping geo-coded internet information. Proceedings of the 2011 iConference.
  • Meyer, E.T., Graham, M., and Schroeder, R. (2010) Online visibility, local practices, and access to global knowledge. Paper presented at the XVII International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Reports

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Teaching

Courses taught at the OII

  • ICT and Development

    Introducing the debates and practices surrounding ICT uses in the Global South and Global North, drawing on Anthropology, Development Studies, Economics, Geography and History to examine the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that underpin development.

  • Social Research Methods and the Internet II: Advanced Qualitative Analysis

    Analysis of qualitative data gathered during the course of social research and the Internet requires both a set of specialized skills and an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of qualitative approaches to social research.

  • Social Research Methods and the Internet II: Methods Core

    This course provides students with the opportunity to engage with the methodological, ethical and philosophical underpinnings of quantitative and qualitative social science research practices.

DPhil students supervised at the OII

Current students

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Webcasts

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News

  • Malaysia's social media election

    2 May 2013 Al Jazeera

    In the run-up to the Malaysia's first 'social media' election, Al Jazeera quotes findings by Mark Graham that Malaysia is the sixth largest producer of information via Twitter in the world.

  • Catalan Wikipedia Reaches 400,000 Article Milestone

    19 April 2013 Global Voices

    The Catalan version of Wikipedia plays an important role in raising global awareness of the region, people and its language.  Mark Graham says that nowhere in the world has such high visibility for a language is relatively little spoken.

  • Free for all? Lifting the lid on a Wikipedia crisis

    17 April 2013 New Scientist

    In an in-depth analysis of the challenges facing Wikipedia in expanding participation beyond the English speaking world, Mark Graham’s research on Wikipedia is referenced and DPhil student Heather Ford is quoted.

  • Where is Africa on the Internet?

    1 April 2013 WIPO

    The UN Agency website quotes Mark Graham's research findings in an article about the WikiAfrica project. He says that there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the 54 countries of Africa.

  • Who Writes the Wikipedia Entries About Where You Live?

    26 March 2013 The Atlantic

    Mark Graham tackles the issue of where our information comes from, and how this should influence the way we interpret it?

  • Where is Africa on the Internet?

    18 March 2013 WIPO

    The UN Agency website quotes Mark Graham's research findings in an article about the WikiAfrica project. He says that there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the 54 countries of Africa.

  • Sad if no ethics in social media

    28 February 2013 Straits Times

    In a speech at an event during Malaysia's Social Media Week, PM Datuk Seri Naji Razak referred to Mark Graham's work on Twitter usage as evidence that Malaysia stands out as a forward looking country.

  • Najib: Election 2013 first social media election

    27 February 2013 The Malaysian Insider

    The Malaysian Prime Minister has predicted that the forthcoming election will be Malaysia's first social media election.  He quoted research by Mark Graham which indicated that Malaysia and Brazil have very high levels of Twitter use.

  • Tweets help visualise information density of African cities

    18 February 2013 DW Akademie

    'Cities have become both digital and digitized' says Mark Graham whose work on geocoded tweets in African cities is answering questions on his research for Deutsche Welle Akademie.

  • Mapping Tweets in Africa

    14 February 2013 The Guardian Data Store

    Who uses Twitter in Africa? Where are they based?  The Guardian Data Store says that Mark Graham’s datamaps of tweets from key African cities provide a unique insight.

  • The Urbanist: A weekly look at the people and ideas shaping our urban lives. Maps.

    14 February 2013 Monocle

    Monocle's editor Andrew Tuck interviews Mark Graham about maps. Episode 70 (14 February)

  • How the Internet Reinforces Inequality in the Real World

    6 February 2013 The Atlantic

    In this in-depth article, Mark Graham discusses the different ways we can think about and study the digital information about real-world places in the geoweb.

  • Big data and the death of the theorist

    25 January 2013 Wired

    Mark Graham is skeptical about on the death of the scientific theory at the hands of big data analysis: "when talking about 'big data' and the humanities, there will always be things that are left unsaid, things that haven't been measured or codified".

  • Uncharted territory: Where digital maps are leading us

    25 January 2013 New Scientist

    The problem with many digital maps is that it is difficult to know how they have been curated - and who, what and where is left out. And the map-making choices made by the likes of Google or Microsoft are often unclear, says Mark Graham.

  • Tweets decide SAFC v Toon fans’ debate

    12 January 2013 Jarrow and Hebburn Gazette

    Regional newspaper, the Jarrow and Hebburn Gazette highlights the references to the football clubs of the North East in the Premier League Twitter map created by the OII team.

  • Chasing data shadows: Twitter map of football fans

    11 January 2013 University of Oxford

    A team from the OII has created an interactive Twitter map to find out where conversations about premier league football clubs originate.  It shows that there are fewer Manchester United fans in London and the south-east than is popularly assumed.

  • Most Man U fans do not come from the south, study shows

    11 January 2013 ITV

    ITV reports the work of the OII team on the interactive Premier League Twitter map.

  • Now a Twitter map of football fans

    11 January 2013 India Blooms

    India based web-site reports the work of the OII team on the interactive Premier League Twitter map.

  • Oxford Internet Institute maps Premier League Twitter conversations in UK

    11 January 2013 Anchorfan

    Social Sport News site reports on the interactive map produced by Mark Graham and the OII team which maps twitter conversations about Premier League football clubs.

  • Twitter map finally reveals exactly where Manchester United fans live

    11 January 2013 Daily Telegraph

    The Daily Telegraph highlights the ‘fascinating’ map plotting Twitter conversations about Premier League Football clubs created by a team at the OII.

  • Which Premier League teams are the most popular in search area? A Twitter interactive map

    11 January 2013 The Guardian

    The interactive map of geotagged Tweets mentioning Premier League teams or associated hashtags  created by the team at the OII features on the Data Store Show and Tell page of the Guardian.

  • Digital trails of the UK floods - how well do tweets match observations?

    28 November 2012 The Guardian, Datablog

    Physical phenomena like floods don’t just leave physical trails; they create digital ones as well. Mark Graham and the team have combined meteorological and social media data to plot data shadows of the recent UK floods.

  • Election 2012: Twitter map predicts presidential race results

    6 November 2012 Syracuse.com

    A map of the origins of tweets referencing either Obama or Romney in the month leading up to the US presidential elections predicted the outcome. 

  • Twitter Map Predicts 2012 Presidential Election: Will It Be Right?

    6 November 2012 Huffington Post Technology (US)

    A map of the origins of tweets referencing either Obama or Romney in the month leading up to the US presidential elections predicted the outcome. 

  • Double Take

    4 November 2012 BBC Radio 5 Live

    Mark Graham talks to Radio 5 Live about the role of social media in spreading information during a crisis.

  • What can Twitter tell us about Hurricane Sandy flooding? Visualised

    31 October 2012 Guardian Datablog

    Mark Graham, with help from an OII team, collected tweets mentioning flooding to examine how twitter usage might reflect lived experiences of Hurricane Sandy. The resulting visualisation shows where US tweets originated over the crucial two days.

  • The new local

    27 October 2012 The Economist

    The physical and the digital world are becoming increasingly intertwined.  The smartphone allows easy online exploration of physical surroundings.  A paper by Mark Graham and others which imagines a digital 'Ulysses' through Dublin is quoted.

  • The world in your pocket

    27 October 2012 The Economist

    Mark Graham's work on the geoweb, online information used by digital mapmakers,  is highlighted in an article about how digital maps are created. The geoweb is thickest in the Nordic countries and thinnest in the poorest areas.

  • Siamo tutti cartografi

    1 October 2012 Corriere della sera

    Mark Graham is quoted in an article about geomapping, explaining how digital maps are created and the discrepancies between the richest and poorest countries.

  • In the Balance: Are we all smartphone users now?

    16 September 2012 BBC World Service

    Mark Graham and others discussed whether increased connectivity changes lives and if business people must have smartphones. The panel agreed that connectivity does change lives but was less convinced about smartphones, especially in Africa.

  • Geography, Big Data, and Augmented Realities

    1 August 2012 Oxford Internet Institute

    New digital dimensions of place profoundly affect the ways that we interact with our urban environments. Dr Mark Graham leads a research project to interrogate these virtual layers of the city, asking what they are, where they are, and why they matter.

  • London 2012 Olympics: the first Twitter Games opens debate of athletes using social media

    31 July 2012 Daily Telegraph

    Olympic athletes have been interacting with sports fans and the general public via social media and in particular Twitter. But there is divided opinion among athletes and coaches as to the benefits. Mark Graham comments.

  • Map of the Day: The Geography of Klout

    17 July 2012 The Atlantic

    Coverage of an OII map of the geography of Klout, the online service that attempts to gauge social media influence. The map was produced as part of OII research on the geography of Twitter.

  • US tops Twitter Chart

    6 July 2012 CorpComms

    The on-line magazine for corporate communicators reports the research by Mark Graham and Monica Stephens into the origin of Twitter users. Mark's comments on the OII website about the usefulness of Twitter are quoted.

  • Where Tweets are born: the top countries on Twitter

    6 July 2012 Huffington Post (USA)

    Mark Graham’s research into the countries that use Twitter most shows that citizens in the US use Twitter more than any other country, followed by Brazil, Indonesia and the UK.

  • Tweeting all over the world

    5 July 2012 Daily Mail

    The Daily Mail reports details of OII research into the origin of tweets. Mark Graham is extensively quoted on how he and fellow researcher Monica Stephens went about collecting data and mapping the results.

  • Where the World's Tweets Come From, Vizualised.

    5 July 2012 Gizmodo

    Report of the research by Mark Graham and Monica Stephens into the origins of Tweets worldwide.

  • Church vs beer: using Twitter to map regional differences in US culture

    4 July 2012 Guardian Data-Store

    The Guardian Data Store featured one of Mark Graham's visualisations which used geolocated Tweets to gauge differences in culture across the US. The most tweets including 'beer' came from San Francisco and the most for 'church' from Dallas, Texas.

  • Where Do the World's Tweets Come From?

    29 June 2012 The Atlantic.com

    The OII visualization 'A Geography of Twitter' is a good illustration of how wide is the Twitter world says Rebecca Rosen. Authors Mark Graham and Monica Stephens suggest Twitter might allow democratization of information sharing and production.

  • OII Recognised as Educational Institution of the Year at Wikimedia UK's Annual Conference

    15 June 2012 Oxford Internet Institute

    The OII has been recognised as Educational Institution of the Year at the "UK Wikimedian of the Year" awards (12 May 2012). The award was made largely in recognition of the work by OII Research Fellow Dr Mark Graham to map and visualise Wikipedia data.

  • Wikipedia busts the language barrier

    16 May 2012 New Scientist

    Mark Graham comments on Omnipedia, a software system which allows users to browse topics from up to 25 Wikipedia language editions at once.

  • The Problem with Wikidata

    6 April 2012 The Atlantic

    Mark Graham highlights potential drawbacks to Wikidata, an initiative by Wikipedia which will allow a single change on a central repository to change references across all the language versions. The risk is that cultural context will be lost.

  • Wikipedia world: an interactive guide to every language. Infographic map

    4 April 2012 The Guardian

    In 'Show and Tell' on the Guardian Data Store, Simon Rogers, winner of the OII award for best internet journalist in 2011, highlights the Mapping Wikipedia project which shows millions of articles worldwide in a variety of languages.

  • O mundo pela Wikipédia

    1 April 2012 Exame Magazine

    Exame, the Brazilian economic and business magazine, features the work of Mark Graham and colleagues on Wikipedia as part of the Geographies of the World's Knowledge project.

  • Confirmed: The Internet Does Not Solve Global Inequality

    26 March 2012 The Atlantic

    The message of the OII's interactive iBook "Geographies of the World's Knowledge" confirms that the Anglophone world dominates academic and user-generating publishing and rich countries dominate the production of user content.

  • Big data and the end of theory?

    9 March 2012 The Guardian

    The notion that 'big' data produces better insights and results than traditional methodology has gained traction in popular imagination and beyond. But does big data have the answers that specialists can't provide? Mark Graham suggests otherwise.

  • Without Wikipedia, where can you get your facts?

    18 January 2012 BBC News

    On the day that Wikipedia blacks out its English language site, the BBC News magazine explores alternative sources of information. Mark Graham says that Wikipedia is open access, free and that mistakes are quickly corrected.

  • In a networked world, why is the geography of knowledge still uneven?

    9 January 2012 The Guardian

    User-generated Internet content is weighted towards the global north; Mark Graham suggests that the division of digital labour urgently needs rebalancing.

  • Santa v Satan v Zombies: who wins in the battle for Google Maps?

    16 December 2011 The Guardian Datablog

    Father Christmas faces the Devil and the undead in this academic research from Mark Graham’s work on Google maps

  • Wikipedia Language Maps Created By Oxford Internet Institute's Mark Graham

    13 November 2011 Huffington Post

    "Mark Graham led a team of researchers who broke down Wikipedia's geotagged articles by language and examined the global scope of the encyclopedia. They plotted these data onto maps of the world to show the spread of languages within the encyclopedia."

  • The world of Wikipedia's languages mapped

    11 November 2011 Guardian Datablog

    What happens if you map every geotagged Wikipedia article - and then analyse it for language use? A team of Oxford University researchers has found out.

  • This Map Shows the World of Wikipedia Broken Down by Languages

    11 November 2011 Gizmodo US

    "Ever wondered if anyone outside your redneck little town writes about it on Wikipedia? Or if anyone has ever written about Australia in Arabic? Guess no longer, because someone's worked it out for you."

  • Fibre-optic hopes for East Africa

    31 October 2011 Economic and Social Research Council

    Mark Graham interviewed on East African broadband: "The arrival of fibre-optic cables has been generally perceived as a hugely transformative event. There seems to be a lot of optimism that East African businesses will now be able to compete globally".

  • Oxford Internet Institute creates zombie awareness map: Zombie-related internet activity surveyed across the world

    8 October 2011 Cherwell

    Cherwell features the OII's zombie awareness map, part of the OII visualisation series. Mark Graham comments "Broadly speaking I am interested in the geography of information. I'm also a big fan of (or terrified of) zombies".

  • Oxford on standby for zombie invasion

    7 October 2011 The Oxford Student

    "Computer wizards at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) have constructed an online map which denotes the part of the world where the search keyword "zombie" is most prevalent." The map is part of the OII's visualisation series.

  • The Flickr map of the world

    30 September 2011 The Guardian

    Who shares their images with the world? The Guardian's Datablog highlights Mark Graham's visualisation of Flickr use worldwide.

  • Oxford University on zombie alert

    29 September 2011 Technolog, msnbc.com

    "So you know the impending zombie apocalypse, the one we in the Western world await with a mix of dread and anticipation?" Mark Graham maps the zombie apocalypse using the Google Maps database.

  • The World Map of the Places That Care About Zombies

    23 September 2011 The Atlantic Wire

    "The Oxford Internet Institute produces some of the more engaging data-visualizations we seem to come across on Tumblr or Twitter". Mark Graham maps the zombie apocalypse using the Google Maps database.

  • The Zombie Map of the World

    23 September 2011 The Guardian

    "What happens when you ask Google maps for the location of zombies around the world?" Mark Graham maps the zombie apocalypse using the Google Maps database.

  • Getting creative with data

    15 August 2011 The Guardian

    Mark Graham is quoted on the power of new technology to assist sustainability and ethical consumption.

  • Oxford: East African SMEs Clamoring to Use Internet

    7 July 2011 GBI Portal

    The ESRC and DFID have awarded funding to the East Africa research group at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), led by Dr Mark Graham, to study the economic impact of broadband roll-out in East Africa.

  • A New Kind of Globalisation? User-Generated Content and Transparent Production Chains

    9 December 2010 The Guardian

    Mark Graham writes about visualising production chains: in an age of transparency and instant access to information, why do we know so little about the factories and farms that make the things that we consume?

  • Will broadband internet establish a new development trajectory for east Africa?

    7 October 2010 The Guardian

    Mark Graham on how recent investment in broadband in East Africa (the last major region on Earth without fibre-optic broadband Internet connections) will fundamentally alter the connectivity of the region.

  • "Football" crazy

    19 June 2010 The Economist

    Discussing Mark Graham's work that calculates the proportion of all geo-tagged internet content (linked to Google Map placemarks) mentioning the word "football" in the 32 countries competing in the 2010 World Cup.

  • Which nation talks about football the most in cyberspace?

    17 June 2010 University of Oxford

    Mark Graham uses Google Maps to determine whether the term 'football' or 'soccer' is preferred across the world and which nations like to talk about football the most.

  • The Beer Belly of America

    17 March 2010 New York Times

    Mark Graham uses Google Maps data to shows the parts of the US where bars outnumber grocery stores, in order to chart drinking patterns and visualize how social values help shape economic markets.

  • The playcast: Decoding Wikipedia and following cricket on Twitter

    21 January 2010 Mint.com

    Interview with Mark Graham about the geography of Wikipedia, looking at those places in the world that are well-represented in in wikipedia, and those which aren't.

  • Map Reveals Which Countries Wikipedia Discusses Most -- And Least

    12 December 2009 Huffington Post

    Mark Graham's Wikipedia map shows areas best covered by Wikipedia: 'Remarkably there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the fifty-three countries in Africa.'

  • Wikipedia's known unknowns

    1 December 2009 The Guardian

    Marks Graham's analysis of Wikipedia entries reveals the world's knowledge deserts - which may provide a second wave of activity for the online encyclopedia.

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Last updated on: 23 May 2013