Mapping the anxiety of digitally mediated mobilities in the mundane

Abstract

This article focuses on the ‘small moments’ of digitally mediated mobilities in the mundane. Drawing on a qualitative GIS analysis of people’s walking, driving and ride-hailing in urban Guangzhou (a megacity in south China), this article maps the complex and dynamic anxieties from a social practice perspective. It argues that anxieties of daily mobilities are entangled with digital practices of reducing, removing or producing future uncertainties, as well as those of generating instant confusion of the digital/data during the management and organisation of familiar routines. The key findings of this study suggest that anxieties of digitally mediated mobilities are situated knowledges generated by the temporalities, spatialities and socialities of daily movements. These complex, contingent and dynamic anxieties are coped with improvisationally. These findings can bring new insights into mobilities studies by constructing an understanding of the co-constitution of embodied and emotional movements and mobile technologies in the digital mundane.