‘We, L’Aquila’: Production and representation of urban space through a social map platform

Socio-technical objects play a pivotal role in transforming and handing down the perception of a certain space. The most recent mapping software allows representing the physical and the relational characteristic of the space. This practice takes on a new meaning when the space in question is no longer accessible by the citizens. When a city has been destroyed by a strong earthquake, the representation of the urban space as it was before the disaster can take place in interactive space and its reconstruction passes through a ‘socio-technical network’ composed by heterogeneous actors. The following paper is about the qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the content posted on a social map platform named ‘Noi, L’Aquila’, created by Google after the L’Aquila earthquake of 6 April 2009. The main aim of the research is to verify how the urban space of L’Aquila has been represented through the Google social map. The main findings of our analysis show that the social production of the urban space through an online map platform represents a complex process and highlights the role played by a socio-technical object in emotionally supporting the impossibility to access to the offline spaces damaged by the earthquake.