GI_Forum 2017, Volume 5, Issue 2, pp. 23-35, 2017/12/13
Journal for Geographic Information Science
In Austria and Germany, one of the more recent political shifts has been a swing towards the extreme right (AfD, ‘Identitäre’), accompanied by a change in what is seen as acceptable in language. Right-wing movements have come more into the open, straddling the fence around what is forbidden under Austrian and German law. Symbols forbidden by laws designed to prevent a reproduction of NSDAP institutions and ideology can regularly be seen in public spaces. This paper presents an initiative triggered by one of these open representations of Nazi ideology in November 2016, when two men flew a children’s kite in Salzburg city-centre. The kite was decorated with 4 different Nazi symbols. Using Instagram, the initiative maps such symbols collected by the public and extracts location information for representation in ArcGIS-Online. We show how this initiative can contribute to the formation of the political subject and discuss teaching methods, the technical development of the project, and initial results.
Keywords: Geography education; citizenship education; right-wing extremism, geomedia
