Maps have changed and with that our sense of space and spatial awareness. The key objective of this research programme is to develop a framework for the conceptualization of digital maps as new techno-cultural phenomena. Digital maps allow a greater degree of interaction between users and mapping interfaces than analogue maps do. Instead of just reading maps, users have far more influence on how maps look. Whether a navigation device that adjusts its route-display according to where the driver chooses to go, or a map in a computer-game that is partly created by players, maps have become more interactive and are now co-produced by their users.With this ERC starting grant I propose to build up a new research programme to investigate what this shift entails. I will do so by conducting a comparative analysis of a broad spectrum of digital mapping devices: in relation to (a) each other, (b) traditional cartography and (c) to other media forms that are concerned with mapping and navigation.This research programme will yield new results on how digital maps can be simultaneously understood as new media, technologies and cartographies by using a unique combination of perspectives from New Media Studies, Science and Technologies Studies. It will also contribute to a recently emerging discussion in which new media are conceived as material cultures that are physically embedded in daily life, countering conventional views of them as just new, virtual and ‘out there’. Digital maps underscore all the main assertions that figure in this recent ‘material turn’ at once: they remediate existing spaces, they merge virtual and physical spaces and are locally used and appropriated yet at the same time products of a global culture. This study will thus break new ground by offering New Media Studies innovative ways for understanding materiality, spatiality and technology.