In her talk, Stephens will discuss the distribution of marijuana prices in various regions and the value of volunteered geographic information with studies that could not be conducted otherwise.
At priceofweed.com the site’s organizers request that volunteers contribute the prices paid for marijuana and the location of purchase. “This site, along with statistical measures used to model the price, demonstrates that within the U.S. there is a geography to marijuana pricing characterized by lower prices in states with medical marijuana programs and higher prices farther from such areas,” says Stephens.
Stephens will also discuss the project as a recent study in the field of volunteered geographic information. VGI refers to map users adding geographic information to an existing base map.
Monica Stephens lectures in the Geography Department at Humboldt State University. Her research focuses on social and geographic inequalities in online content. Stephens blogs at www.floatingsheep.org and has published maps in Wired Magazine, The Guardian, CNN, Gizmodo, The Atlantic, The Atlantic Cities, the BBC, Slate, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere.
For more information about the speakers series contact Josh Meisel, HIIMR Co-Director, at (707) 826-4446 or meisel@humboldt.edu.