Google Maps review sub-platform: A narrative view of design, affordances, and user activity

This article begins by conceptualizing Google Maps Review and its commenting apparatus as a distinct communication (sub)-platform (GMRsP) of Google Maps, which revolves around review sharing (writing and reading). Then, by combining structural and post-structural narratological frameworks, we describe GMRsP design and affordances, and conceptualize their potential for shaping emergent user activity and platform dynamics. The unpacking of meanings and possible implications of GMRsP’s affordances illuminates the intricate inter-relations between the platform socio-technical design and the contents of its reviews. This stresses the reviews’ evaluative narrative function and suggests a spiraling communication design, where the (sub)-platform’s narrative functions may alternately shape different points of entry for various Google Maps sites’ reviews and experiences. The study’s theoretical contribution includes informing future critical empirical and theoretical studies of reviewing/commenting platforms, stressing the types of participatory roles they provide and the effects they may have; and advancing platform studies by highlighting the emergent relations between sub-platforms and platforms.