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Abstract

Geomedia technologies represent an advanced set of digital media devices, hardwares, and softwares. Previous research indicates that these place contingent technologies are currently gaining significant social relevance, and contribute to the shaping of contemporary public lives and spaces. However, research has yet to empirically examine how, and for whom, geomedia technologies are made relevant, as well as the role of these technologies in wider processes of social and spatial (re-)production. This special issue contributes valuable knowledge to existing research in the realm of communication geography, by viewing the current “geomediascape” through the lens of social constructivist perspectives, and by interrogating the reciprocal shaping of technology, the social, and space/place. Scrutinizing the social construction of geomedia technologies in various empirical contexts and in relation to different social groups, the essays deal with important questions of power and control, and ultimately challenge the notion of (geo)mediatization as a neutral process.

Keywords

Geomedia geomediatization social construction space/place technology

Technology, as pointed out by Leo Marx (1997), is a “hazardous” word because it makes us think about the world in certain ways. Above all, and due to how the term has been used over time, it promotes a view of technological objects as autonomous drivers of social change—and of progress especially (Marx, 1997). Such a view is dangerous to the extent that it conceals the social relations underpinning any and all technologies. Currently, a new set of media technologies are being praised for their progressive powers—what we in this special issue refer to as geomedia technologies (cf. Abend, 2017; Atteneder, 2018; DeNicola, 2012; Fast, Jansson, Lindell, Bengtsson, & Tesfahuney, 2018; Lapenta, 2011, 2012; McQuire, 2011, 2016, 2018; Thielmann, 2007, 2010; Wilken, 2018). This multifaceted group of media devices, hardwares, and softwares have one thing in common: they are inherently place contingent, meaning that they automatically register and respond to user location. Examples include “smart” portable devices that are sensitive to place by way of integrated geographic positioning systems (GPS).

While producers of geomedia technologies (unsurprisingly) stress the empowering potentials of geomedia technologies, other social groups—critical researchers not least—challenge these images by illuminating (also) the potential downsides of said technologies, including problems pertaining to (in-)security, surveillance, media dependency, privacy violation, and exploitation of user data and labor (Chan & Humphreys, 2018; de Souza e Silva, 2013, 2017; de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2010; Dwyer, 2014; Klauser & Widmer, 2017; Leszczynski, 2017; Scholz, 2017; Tarkka, 2010). Still other groups develop specific tactics and strategies for resisting what they understand as the negative consequences of geomediated practices (see, for example, Swanlund & Schuurman, 2018, on resistance to geosurveillance). Geomedia technologies, thus, are controversial and their “progressive” powers much debated. Regardless of which stand we take in the debate, however, geomedia technologies are gaining social relevance and contribute to the shaping of contemporary public lives and public spaces (see, for example, McQuire, 2016; Wilken, 2012). Research has yet to empirically investigate, in various contexts, how, and for whom, geomedia technologies are made relevant, as well as the role of these technologies in wider processes of social and spatial (re-)production.

This special issue views the current “geomediascape” through the lens of social constructivist perspectives (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1967). Such an outlook means that we acknowledge that technology—what it is, whom it is for, and how it ought to be used—is always subjected to negotiations between more or less powerful social groups (Barnes, 1974; Bijker, 1995; Pinch & Bijker, 1984/2012; Harvey & Chrisman, 1998; Humphreys, 2005; MacKenzie, 1990; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999; Pickering, 1995, 1992). It equally means that we acknowledge place as a social product whose meaning or identity is never fixed (Adams, 2009; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1994, 2005). The articles gathered in this volume scrutinize the new conditions brought about by place contingent media devices, hardwares, and softwares, while also considering concurrent economic, political, cultural, and social transformations. Through empirically informed studies of geomediated practices in various contexts (e.g. social networking, tourism, and mapping), distinct geomedia technologies (e.g. SLAM (Simultaneous Locating and Mapping) technology, apps, and mapping platforms) and stakeholders in the geomedia business (e.g. Google Maps, Yelp and Foursquare), the articles make manifest the reciprocal shaping of technology, the social, and space/place.

In this editorial, we propose that theory on “the social construction of technology” as well as “production of space” perspectives are fruitful if we are to grasp the increasingly complex relationship between technology, the social, and space/place that geomedia technologies engender. We suggest (geo)mediatization as a mediating concept that effectively bridges the two strands of theory and serves to obstruct both social and technological determinism. Ultimately, what we discern in this special issue is the social construction of geomedia technologies.

Geomedia as technological and social condition

Terms like “location-based services” (Frith, 2017; Küpper, 2005), “locative media” (Hjorth, 2013; Wilken & Goggin, 2014), “location-aware” media (Licoppe & Inada, 2006), “spatial media” (Kitchin, Lauriault, & McArdle, 2018; Leszczynski, 2015), and “the geoweb” (Crampton, 2009; Elwood, 2011) are part of the new vocabulary that has emerged around geomedia technologies, whereas “geotagging,” “checking-in”, “geosurveillance”, “geomapping”, “geobrowsing”, and “geocaching,” represent new or at least significantly advanced kinds of practice that such technologies enable (see, for example, Gazzard, 2011; Hochman & Manovich, 2013; Humphreys & Liao, 2011; Klausen, 2014; for analyses of some of these practices). Thielmann (2007, 2010) was one of the first to recognize geomedia as a new technological condition. Almost a decade ago, he predicted that geomedia—not least due to the abundance of free geodata and geotagged digital content—might “emerge in the near future as the next great wave of modern digital technology” (Thielmann, 2010, p. 7). He proposed geomedia as an umbrella concept for grasping both “locative media” and “mediated localities” (p. 5). Writing at approximately the same time, Lapenta (2011) identified geomedia as a new set of converging technologies, suggesting that the term refers to “platforms that merge existing electronic media + the Internet + location-based technologies (or locative media) + AR (Augmented Reality) technologies in a new mode of digital composite imaging, data association and socially maintained data exchange and communication” (p. 14). McQuire (2016; see also 2011), in turn, recently used geomedia to name “the heterogeneous family of technologies—devices, platforms, screens, operating systems, programs and networks—that constitute the contemporary mediascape” (p. 5). Arguing for what he perceives of as an ongoing paradigmatic shift “from media to geomedia,” McQuire (2016) points to four technologically induced developments that have been incremental to this shift: increasing levels of ubiquity (i.e. that media can be constantly available, in various places), location-awareness (i.e. that user location impact on media flows and content), real-time feedback (i.e. that immediate many-to-many flows of information become possible), and convergence (i.e. that the boundaries between old and new media dissolve) (p. 1).

However, as McQuire (2016) carefully stresses, and as his analyses of the interplay of place contingent technology and urban public spaces put beyond doubt, the shift to geomedia involves not only technological change, but also “profound transformation of social practice” (p. 3). DeNicola (2012), correspondingly, identifies geomedia as “a specific class of technologies and social relations” (p. 80, emphasis added). In sympathy with such holistic and less technology-centered understandings of geomedia, Fast and colleagues (2018) suggest that geomedia is best understood as a relational concept that captures the “fundamental role of media in organizing and giving meaning to processes and activities in space” (p. 4). As they argue—with inspiration from Thielmann’s (2010) eloquent notion of geomedia as both locative media and mediated localities—the concept holds particular relevance as it sits at the intersection of two fundamental and currently accelerated processes: the spatialization of media and the mediatization of place (cf. Falkheimer & Jansson, 2006). Connected mobile technologies, such as the smartphone, laptop, tablet, or smartwatch, are key to both processes (although earlier portable and non-portable technologies also played/play a role in them). Not only do these contemporary geomedia automatically register user location through inherent geopositioning systems and users’ geotagging practices (i.e. “checking-in” on social media) and, hence, embody the spatialization of media; they are also fundamental to the ongoing “smartening up” of private and public places, and thus have become incremental to the mediatization of place (e.g. the home, workplace, or city). With regard to the latter development, we might note, for example, the crucial role of geomedia technologies in what has been referred to as “data-driven urbanism” (Kitchin, 2018).

Both mentioned processes, in turn, come together in the socio-technological molding force that has been presented as geomediatization, and that ultimately brings us into “a social regime where human subjectivity, media and space/place are co-constitutive of one another” (Fast et al., 2018, p. 8). Against the backdrop of earlier conceptualizations of “mediatization” (cf. Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Fast & Jansson, 2019; Hjarvard, 2013; Jansson, 2013, 2014, 2018; Krotz, 2007, 2017), we could think of geomediatization as the “reorganization of social life” that takes place as geomedia technologies become increasingly indispensable in all the more social spheres—from financing and trade, travels and sports, work and transports, to family life and love—and as people begin to adapt their actions and interactions accordingly (cf. Adams et al., 2017, p. 10). Given that we accept Jansson’s (2017, 2018) view of mediatization as a “dialectical process,” we may further perceive of geomediatization as a process that may be both liberating (e.g. freeing us from physical and temporal restraints) and trapping (i.e. making it increasingly difficult to lead a life without geomedia). The value of such a perspective lies especially in its capacity to acknowledge geomediatization as a contradictory meta-process that can never be separated out from social life at large.

Writing on the “necessity of geomedia,” Wilken (2018) argues that the expanding range of smartphone applications and services—and their techno-commercial underpinnings—have made “questions of location” increasingly urgent. Indeed, an embodiment of all four trends foundational to the transformation of media into geomedia—ubiquity, location-awareness, real-time feedback, and convergence (McQuire, 2016)—the smartphone can arguably be considered the “poster boy or girl” of geomedia technologies. We need but consider the smartphone’s mere quantitative presence in everyday public spaces to grasp the cultural significance of geomedia. Strolling the streets of a modern city, we are likely to meet a myriad of people using their connected phones to, for example, navigate the streets, look for potential partners on some location-based dating app, purchase e-tickets, check-in on social media, play augmented reality games, locate their next “gig” job, and so on. Even when “just” used for making phone calls, listening to music, or reading the newspaper, geomedia algorithms and protocols are in play.

Besides its status as the incarnation of all things “geo,” though, the smartphone is also a container of certain social, cultural, technological, and commercial rationales, without which geomediatization would lose much of its speed and impact. For example, on the premise that the smartphone is enriched with various location-sensitive mobile social networking (LMSN) platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat), the commercially refined “social media logic” (van Dijck, 2013; van Dijck & Poell, 2013) will exercise its influence on the smartphone user, possibly with the consequence of him or her making geotagged status updates, potentially with images attached. The status update might be used simply to inform near-by peers about one’s specific location at a specific point in time (“I am here), but could also be a part of the user’s continual search for recognition and popularity (“I was at this cool place”) (cf. Jansson, 2018; Schwartz & Halegoua, 2015; van Dijck, 2013). Repeated reminders and boosts from the LMSN platform to make such updates must in turn be understood against platform owners’ recognition of the economic value of users’ geodata and (unpaid) “geospatial labour” (Fuchs, 2014; Scholz, 2017, pp. 73–74).

More than merely a new cluster of technological artifacts and services, thus, geomedia technologies engender a new social condition, in which people’s everyday engagement with media, places, and people is qualitatively different compared to the pre-geomedia era. Our choice here to add “technologies” to “geomedia” should primarily be understood as an attempt from our side to position our inquiry of geomedia in relation to previous explorations and conceptualizations of the technology/social nexus. More specifically, whereas “geomedia technologies” can be considered a tautology (media are technologies, too), this labeling is meant to explicate thematic and methodological linkages between our endeavor in this special issue and pre-existing social construction of technology frameworks (cf. Pinch & Bijker, 1984/2012; Bijker, Hughes & Pinch, 2012; Humphreys, 2005; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999). One of the most important implications of geomediatization is that both geomedia technologies and the social relations that these technologies comprise become natural, normal, or ordinary (cf. Williams, 1974). This ongoing naturalization engenders the obscuring of power relations between various social groups involved in the social construction of geomedia technologies. Only by unveiling the mutual shaping of technology, the social, and space/place do we stand a chance of de-naturalizing such relations and hence bring them to the fore.

Bridging “social construction of technology” and “production of space” perspectives

Influenced by the work of Alfred Schütz, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1967) brought the notion of social construction to the social sciences. Since then, research addressing the social “construction” or “shaping” of technology has proliferated, and the field is today rich and multifaceted. Perspectives on the social construction of technology were developed to counter the domination of technological determinism and to interrogate social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of technological innovation (Humphreys, 2005). Technological determinist interpretations of technology are flawed because they, as held by MacKenzie and Wajcman (1999), promote “passive” outlooks on technological change and ultimately “impoverishes the political life of our societies” (p. 5). Specific theoretical schools within this field of study, such as “Social Construction of Technology” (SCOT), “Actor Network Theory” (ANT), and “Large-Scale Technological Systems” (LTS), have in common their attention to the relation between society and technology as shaped by different agents, actors, or actants (Bijker et al., 2012). As provocatively stated by Bijker and Pinch (2012), the constructivist perspective uniting these schools serves to challenge any old story about “how heroic inventors and engineers stole great ideas about technology from the gods and gave them to the mortals” (p. xvii).

In their seminal analysis of the social construction of the bicycle, Pinch and Bijker (1984/2012) introduced the concept of “relevant social groups” to acknowledge the many differing interests that shape the development of an artifact. Each social group, their argument went, will have different problems relating to the bicycle and thus different expectations on what the artifact should be, which essentially makes the bicycle a site of conflict. Beyond users and producers of bicycles, the authors recognized “less obvious social groups,” such as the anti-cyclists (those who do not use the artifact) or specific groups of users (such as women cyclists) (Pinch & Bijker, 1984/2012, p. 24). Their innovative argument was that all groups—even the anti-cyclists—are involved in the construction of the bicycle, albeit with varying degrees of muscle to define the technology, or, in SCOT terminology, to reduce “interpretive flexibility” and bring “rhetorical closure.” Obviously, the notion of relevant social groups raises the delicate problems of how to determine which groups are in fact “relevant” to study as well as how to avoid excluding “invisible” groups from research (i.e. groups that the researcher cannot even detect as construction agents (cf. MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999). Revisiting SCOT, Humphreys (2005) extends Pinch and Bijker’s analytical framework by identifying meta-categories of social groups: producers, advocates, users, and bystanders.

The SCOT framework has not escaped criticism. One strand of critique suggests that SCOT has not paid sufficient attention to the power relations between social groups, and how technological innovation is shaped by social structures (cf. Humphreys, 2005; Klein & Kleinman, 2002 though see also, for example, Kline & Pinch, 1996). As, for example, Carolyn Marvin (1988) has persuasively revealed in her study of electric communication in the late 19th century, social categories like gender, ethnicity, and class exercise great influence on the shaping of technology. Another strand of critique pertains to SCOT’s engagement with representations and interpretations of technology, and, thus, its priority to human agents.¹ As argued by Winner (1980/1999), “social determinist” analyses fail to take technology seriously and ultimately imply “that technical things do not matter at all” (p. 29). Post-humanist scholars, like Latour (2005), Barad (2003), Pickering (1995), Mol (2002), and Law (2002) have argued for the necessity to bring also nonhuman agents—or actants—into the equation, and to acknowledge the (political) powers of technology, in its own right. According to its proponents, ANT escapes both technological and social determinism by considering the complex interplay of human and nonhuman actors in technology networks.

In contrast, mediatization theory has been accused of overemphasizing media as agents of change relative to other, non-media, actors. Deacon and Stanyer (2014), for instance, have claimed that the notion of mediatization promotes a “center-staging” of media actors, logics, and technologies (p. 1033). However, many mediatization scholars explicitly apply social constructivist perspectives and even more scholars in the field are careful to stress the mutual shaping of technology and the social. Couldry and Hepp (2017), for example, recently made a case for the need to revisit Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) social construction of reality thesis in light of the communicative forms of the digital age and the current state “deep” mediatization. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s ANT framework and Raymond Williams’ cultural materialism, Couldry and Hepp claim that the concept of mediatization helps us to critically analyze the “interrelation” between media change and social change (p. 35). In a similar vein, Hepp, Hjarvard, and Lundby (2015) state—as a response to Deacon and Stanyer’s criticism—that “Mediatization research is not about media effects but, as noted above, about the interrelation between the change of media and communication, on the one hand, and the change of (fields of) culture and society, on the other hand” (p. 320). “Media,” they clarify, “are not necessarily the ‘driving forces’ of transformations” (p. 320).

The articles in this special issue provide enriching insights into “the social construction of geomedia technologies” in the dualistic sense of the concept: they consider how the social (i.e. social groups, economic forces, urban lifestyles, politics, and ideology) shape geomedia technologies as well as how geomedia technologies (as physical objects/artifacts, activities /processes, and (embodied) knowledge) mold the social. The “geo” in geomedia, furthermore, compels us to add space/place to the equation. Adams (2017, p. 18; see also 2009, 2018) identifies four ways in which media are geographical, all of which surface in the articles in this volume: (1) media exist in places (i.e. in physical locations), (2) places exists in media (as representations), (3) media exist in spaces (as material communication infrastructures across the landscape), and (4) spaces exist in media (as functional social contexts created by social networking activities). While mediatization scholars have lately been prone to approach the technology/social interrelation from spatial perspectives (e.g. Adams & Jansson, 2012; Christensen, 2014; Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Falkheimer & Jansson, 2006, Ch. 5; Fast et al., 2018; Hepp, Simon, & Sowinska, 2018; Jansson, 2013, 2017, 2018), the SCOT scholarship has to a more limited extent drawn parallels between social construction of technology and Lefebvreian “(social) production of (social) space” perspectives (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 26) (though, see, for example, Graham, 1998). As contributing articles make manifest, there is much to gain from pairing the two schools of thought when seeking to grasp the role of technology in geomediatized societies, spatial production, and structures of power. The five articles constituting this special issue contribute to existing research and theory on the technology-social-place/space junction by scrutinizing geomedia technologies with respect to (at least) four distinguishable albeit overlapping themes:

Geomediated practices. SCOT’s notion of users as a relevant social group (see also, for example, Oudshoorn & Pinch, 2005) gained new momentum with the emergence of Web 2.0, and today the notion of the user-as-(unpaid)-producer is common knowledge in media studies (e.g. Andrejevic, 2004; Fast, Örnebring, & Karlsson, 2016; Jenkins, 2006; Terranova, 2000). Geomediatization represents a new stage in the convergence of producer and user identities, as users’ geospatial data and labor is constantly informing the technology and its content. The processes, activities, or practices of geomedia technologies are manifold, but remain—partly due to the sheer novelty of many of them—understudied. The contributing articles add to our understanding of the normalization of geomedia through everyday geomediated practices, such as photo taking, checking-in, navigating, or geomedia-guided traveling.

Geomediated places. The “geomediated construction of reality,” to paraphrase Couldry and Hepp (2017), deserves considerably more attention if we accept the notion that contemporary geomedia technologies represent the world in particular ways and thus foster particular world views. “Places in geomedia,” to borrow from Adams (2009, 2017, 2018) come, perhaps most obviously, in the form of cartographies (i.e. when represented though a GPS device), but also, for instance, in the shape of user-produced or algorithmically generated reviews and rankings (i.e. at LMSN sites). Articles in this special issue reveal, among other things, the role of geomedia in processes of spatial coding (Lefebvre, 1991), cultural classification (Bourdieu, 1979/1984), and ultimately the legitimization of places, practices, and lifestyles.

Geomediatization stakeholders. Krotz (2017) argues that “under the given conditions in capitalism and the growing power of huge Internet giants, such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon and others, critical mediatization research is necessary” (p. 113). As also stressed by MacKenzie and Wajcman (1999), “Technological reasoning and economic reasoning are often inseparable” (p. 12). Articles in this special issue make manifest the powers of geomediatization stakeholders—that is, of technology companies whose mere existence rely on their ability to grow geomedia dependencies, such as Google Maps, Foursquare, and Yelp—to define technology as well as to shape human perception (i.e. of physical locations).

Geomedia systems. Mediatization scholars tend to be in favor of holistic views on media technologies, meaning that focus is directed toward “media assemblages,” “media environments,” or simply “media” rather than toward specific mediums or technologies. Such approaches to media and technology makes increasing sense if we consider the coming of transmedia as a new technological (and social) regime (Fast & Jansson, 2019; Jansson, 2013, 2018), defined by increased interrelation between various converging technologies (see also Couldry & Hepp, 2017; McQuire, 2016). As also recognized in SCOT-inspired theory, “Typically, and increasingly, technologies come not in the form of separate, isolated devices but as part of a whole, as part of a system” (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999, p. 10). If we add to this the increasingly fuzzy boundaries between human and nonhuman agents that geomedia technologies engender (cf. Kanderske & Thielmann, this volume), it makes sense to approach geomedia technologies as systems.²

As stated previously, SCOT has been accused of neglecting the role of nonhuman agents in the social construction of technology. Contributing articles in this special issue make manifest the complex interplay of multiple social groups—and nonhuman agents—in the social construction of geomedia technologies. In the last and final section, we shall now explicate the concrete contributions of the individual papers comprising this volume.

The contributing articles

We have argued that geomediatization implies that geomedia technologies are becoming ordinary. Rowan Wilken and Lee Humphreys’ article, “Constructing the Check-In: Reflections on Photo-Taking among Foursquare Users,” contributes to our understanding of the normalization of geomedia by interrogating end-users’ everyday engagement with LMSN. Drawing on a mixed-methods dataset, including user-generated photos and interviews with end-users in Melbourne and New York City, they find that Foursquare users are prone to share geotagged photos representing the “banale” routines and esthetics of everyday life. In identifying discrepancies between users’ actual use and the company’s intended use of Foursquare, the authors ultimately get at the conflictual nature of the social construction of geomedia technologies.

Max Kanderske and Tristan Thielmann’s contribution, “SLAM and the situativeness of a new generation of geomedia technologies,” shifts our attention to new kinds of geomedia, “SLAM” and interfaces reliant on tracking themselves and their surroundings (e.g. Augmented and Virtual Reality). Through detailed and historically anchored analyses of the said technologies, the authors argue that these latest innovations in geomedia exhibit new kinds of space-making practices—a “radical situativeness”—which, in turn, challenge notions like “inside” and “outside,” and “interior” and “exterior.” Revealing the complicated interplay between human and nonhuman actors underpinning SLAM and related technologies, Kanderske and Thielmann’s article can be seen as a sincere response to the proposition that to understand the technology-social-space/place nexus, we must also be able to grasp geomedia as “things in their own right.”

If analyses of end-users are necessary for understanding the normalization of geomedia in everyday contexts, studies of geomediatization stakeholders, as another relevant social group, are essential if we are to comprehend the economic driving forces of geomediatization. Jordan Frith and Rowan Wilken’s article, “Social shaping of mobile geomedia services: An analysis of Yelp and Foursquare” reveals how geomedia technologies—and ultimately our perception of places—are partly shaped by the interests of investors. Yelp and Foursquare Labs Inc. make apt cases for examining the political economy of geomedia and for scrutinizing how end-users’ interaction with interfaces is shaped by factors such as algorithmically generated recommendations, advertising, and rating systems, and ultimately gets monetized as free labor.

Geomediatization render geomedia indispensable in all the more spheres of social life. Scott McQuire’s article, “One map to rule them all: Google Maps as digital technical object,” highlights the importance of geomedia to the contemporary digital economy and the role of yet another powerful mediatization stakeholder: Google Maps. Tracing Google’s evolving strategy in the mapping business over the past 15 years, McQuire effectively shows how the company’s services have grown increasingly pertinent in all the more social contexts and for increasing numbers of users. As a “technological leader” with growing political-economic powers, Google Maps ultimately contributes to making mapping and geospatial data increasingly vital to contemporary capitalism, with significant consequences for (how we perceive of) time-space. Calculating position, McQuire argues, has become fundamental to commercial profit seeking as well as to governmental agendas.

Analyses of the social construction of geomedia technologies are bound to consider not only how various groups struggle over definitions of technology, but also how technology plays into processes of spatial sorting and social stratification. In his article, “The mutual shaping of geomedia and gentrification: The case of alternative tourism apps,” André Jansson discusses class aspects of geomedia technologies and more specifically the role of geomedia in gentrification processes. Using alternative tourism apps as an illustration, he makes the case that the affordances of geomedia add to the capital of middle-class groups, while at the same time legitimizing their capital. As a distinct contribution to existing research, Jansson provides an analytical framework for studying the mutual shaping of geomedia and gentrification, comprising affordance theory and the notion of “spatial capital.”

The aggregate contribution of this special issue, we would like to believe, lies in its engagement with questions of power in light of current technological, social, political, and economic transformations, and its refusal to view geomediatization as a natural force. The indisputable and cumulative impact of geomedia technologies on modern societies is reflected in the public debate, where concerns about democracy, privacy violation, surveillance, commodification of user data, (in-)security, and control of public spaces are paralleled with celebratory claims about the remarkable benefits of these technologies in both the professional and private contexts. We hope that the articles constituting this volume can make for a more informed debate. Using SCOT jargon, we could say that we hope to contribute to keeping interpretations of technology “flexible” enough to fit arguments that may run counter to those being thrown at us by geomediatization stakeholders, who would rather see a “rhetorical” and undisputable “closure.”

Footnotes

Notes

ORCID iD

Karin Fast

Author biographies

Karin Fast, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies and part of the Geomedia Research Group at Karlstad University, Sweden. Her research interests include mediatization, work, geomedia, and cultural industries. She has previously published her work in journals such as Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, International Journal of Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Media Culture and Society, and Communication Theory. Her latest book is Transmedia Work: Privilege and Precariousness in Digital Modernity (Fast, K. & Jansson, A. 2019).

Emilia Ljungberg has a PhD in Media History and works as a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. Her doctoral thesis explored the construction of identities and places in travel journalism, when travel magazines transformed into lifestyle magazines. In her postdoctoral research, she is studying the role of digital media, specifically apps and social media, in the business and politics of commercial sex. Her other research interests include media and place-making practices, tourism, and digital media and alternative lifestyles.

Lotta Braunerhielm, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and part of the Geomedia Research Group at Karlstad University, Sweden. Her research focuses on tourism, geomedia, digitalization, place-based innovations, and cross-border research. She is the project leader of a research project investigating place-based digital experiences, partly through innovative geomedia methods and in collaboration with the ICT and tourism industries. She has previously published her work in journals such as Norweigan Journal of Geography.

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On the social construction of geomedia technologies

Abstract

Keywords

Geomedia as technological and social condition

Bridging “social construction of technology” and “production of space” perspectives

The contributing articles

Footnotes

Notes

ORCID iD

Author biographies

References