This dissertation investigates the relationship between storytelling and information in the narration of geographic space. While storytelling has historically shaped our understanding of geography, modern practices in data collection, cartography, and geographic visualization enable one-way forms of representation that remove the negotiation and exchange characteristic of storytelling. Information systems and geographic technologies often seek to present information about the world around us; this research focuses instead on how technologies might be used to aid the process of storytelling.

This research is enabled through the development and deployment of Datascape, a vehicle-based geographic storytelling platform. Datascape was developed as the basis for several participant engagements through which diverse groups narrated local areas of interest. By presenting these groups with an open-ended software platform, taking them into local geographies inside the mobile laboratory, and holding collaborative sessions on how to best communicate their stories and engage their audience, I uncovered various practices, tendencies and desired qualities for narrating geographic space. The grounded theory analysis of these engagements not only concerns aspects about this platform and its interaction design, but more importantly reveals the types of practices that such a system should be designed to support.

This research and dissertation are organized around four trajectories I put forth as guidelines for moving the development and use of geographic information technologies from informative to storied accounts of space, landscape, culture and community. I suggest that we move from representational to performative accounts of space; from panoptic to local; from augmented reality to alternate realities; and from participation to engagement. These four trajectories structure the theoretical framework, the project design, and the participant observations and analysis.