Instructor discussion questions

Chapter 5 Discussion Questions

  1. Chapter 5 frames ethics as craft hygiene rather than exceptional crisis response. Which ordinary cartographic decisions most often carry hidden ethical weight, and why are they easy to overlook when a map looks polished?
  2. Provenance in prompt cartography includes data, models, prompts, design specifications, critique, and publication. How does this expanded chain of custody change what instructors, clients, or reviewers should ask students and professionals to submit alongside a map?
  3. The chapter argues that style has lineage and authorship. Where is the boundary between inspiration, homage, professional convention, and plagiarism when an LLM can reproduce a visual style from a few descriptive words or a screenshot?
  4. Privacy protections such as aggregation, masking, larger bins, and limited zoom often make a map less precise. When does reducing precision make a map more truthful, and when might it weaken the map's public value?
  5. Bias can hide in adjectives, color palettes, labels, and claims of neutrality. How can prompt cartographers make bias and framing choices explainable without pretending that explanation alone makes a map fair?