Everywhere she maps, she changes the discourse: A topic modeling of the gender discourse in YouthMappers blogs

Maps not only extend our knowledge of the world but also may offer empowerment when it comes to marginalized people throughout the Global South. In recent years, mapping has undergone significant democratization through open-source mapping technologies, yet gender discrimination persists. To promote the inclusive participation of women in mapping, YouthMappers launched a gender-focused initiative, Everywhere She Maps (ESM), in 2020. This study examines how gender discourse within the YouthMappers network evolved before and after the introduction of the ESM initiative in 2020. Using topic modeling with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and critical discourse analysis, 363 YouthMappers blogs (2016-2023) were analyzed to identify shifts in gender-related language and themes. The analysis revealed that prior to the ESM initiative, blogs largely emphasized humanitarian mapping, community resilience, and technical training, where women appeared as vulnerable subjects. After the ESM initiative, gender discourse expanded across multiple thematic clusters, positioning women as mappers, mentors, and innovators. The reduced lexical distance between gender and non-gender topics indicates growing integration of gendered vocabulary throughout the corpus. These findings suggest that ESM functioned as a discursive intervention, reshaping organizational narratives toward inclusivity and feminist digital geography.