{"title":"Mobile safety apps: a material feminist orientation to precarious mobilities","authors":"Ragan Glover , Melissa Stone","doi":"10.1080/17450101.2024.2330569","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The pervasiveness of sexual violence in the United States was brought to public attention by the #MeToo movement, and in the years since there has been renewed attention to existing resources for survivors of sexual violence, like crisis hotlines and websites, as well as inspiring new initiatives that address problems of sexual violence inscribed within systems of power. Many women have also taken matters into their own hands by downloading one of the many mobile smartphone apps designed to promote women’s safety and/or document instances of sexual violence. In this article, the authors apply critical mobilities studies with a material feminist approach to understand the complex relations that have and continue to coproduce women’s mobilities through the use of mobile safety apps by identifying and analyzing the features of popular mobile safety apps alongside existing literature. Such an account rejects utopian technocratic solutions to complex systemic issues; it also identifies areas for productive intervention in these users’ mobilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51457,"journal":{"name":"Mobilities","volume":"19 6","pages":"Pages 942-954"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Mobilities","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S1745010124000389","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"GEOGRAPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The pervasiveness of sexual violence in the United States was brought to public attention by the #MeToo movement, and in the years since there has been renewed attention to existing resources for survivors of sexual violence, like crisis hotlines and websites, as well as inspiring new initiatives that address problems of sexual violence inscribed within systems of power. Many women have also taken matters into their own hands by downloading one of the many mobile smartphone apps designed to promote women’s safety and/or document instances of sexual violence. In this article, the authors apply critical mobilities studies with a material feminist approach to understand the complex relations that have and continue to coproduce women’s mobilities through the use of mobile safety apps by identifying and analyzing the features of popular mobile safety apps alongside existing literature. Such an account rejects utopian technocratic solutions to complex systemic issues; it also identifies areas for productive intervention in these users’ mobilities.
期刊介绍:
Mobilities examines both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as well as more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public and private spaces, and the travel of material things in everyday life. Recent developments in transportation and communications infrastructures, along with new social and cultural practices of mobility, present new challenges for the coordination and governance of mobilities and for the protection of mobility rights and access. This has elicited many new research methods and theories relevant for understanding the connections between diverse mobilities and immobilities.