Digital Geography and Society最新文献

Climate change perceptions interact with how climate change is portrayed in the news, which is now increasingly accessed via social media platforms. While their effects on climate change awareness have been documented, it is less clear to what extent news consumed via social media platforms influences perceived climate change efficacy, which refers to the belief that one is able to make a difference in the fight against climate change. Our paper investigates the relationship between internet use, news received via social media, and perceived climate change efficacy in Europe, by using multilevel regression that shows the effects on individual, national and regional level. We find that there are modest differences between perceived climate change efficacy within our European sample and that on aggregated, national level Facebook negatively correlates with perceived climate change efficacy. Furthermore, regions with high participation in social media, show lower perceived climate change efficacy. Our multi-level research design thus puts new insights into the spatial manifestation of climate change opinions in the context of a digital geography interested in exploring differences in the effects of digital media uses.

The aim of this paper is to fill a research gap to show how ‘below the line’ comments can be used for digital food activism. As the study focuses on genetically modified (GM) crops and foods, the study also reveals the narratives deployed by commenters in this particular debate. This paper attempts to provide an answer through a qualitative data analysis using a grounded theory approach and a discourse analysis. The findings reveal a lack of trust in science and political authority, and the use of alternative knowledges by digital food activists. The paper concludes by discussing how this study adds to the understanding of digital food activism. Whilst the below the line comments as a form of digital food activism may not connect to action in the non-virtual world, they do offer an opportunity for debate.

The article investigates platform-mediated tourism practices by focusing on the new recreational activities offered by Airbnb, namely “Experiences”. In recent years, the leading short-term rental platform has started an expansion strategy beyond accommodation towards services based on immersive activities led by local hosts. Drawing upon previous research on short-term accommodation platforms, we explore the platformization of such recreational activities by looking at their spatialities, the place-based resources engaged and emerging self-entrepreneurial practices. Our effort is experimental since most literature on Airbnb deals with accommodation listings while Experiences differ from accommodation since they combine different types of local resources, which are less spatially constrained, with the host's personal skills. This paper contributes to understanding the spatial and socio-economic implications of the Airbnb expansion strategy through Experiences. We develop a case study based on 385 Experiences collected in Florence (Italy) in 2019 and analyze their location and distribution patterns, the estimated revenue generated, the typology of resources which are commodified through such activities, and the professional profiles of the hosts. Results show that Experiences seem to erode the well-known spatial concentration of accommodation listings in city centres. This is explained by the different nature of the resources mobilized by the Experiences, which privilege the experiential character of these services (e.g. food tasting, cooking classes). Furthermore, Experiences become a self-employment opportunity for the hosts, reinforcing the unregulated and permeable environment of the digital platform.

This short commentary calls for further geographic engagement with emerging trends in social robotics and human-robot interaction. While the proliferation of social robots in the spaces of everyday life raises numerous empirical, ethical, and political questions, this paper argues that it also presents an opportunity to prompt theoretical debate around questions of space, intelligence, affect and emotion, and the ‘human.’

The present paper investigates the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Airbnb's market and focuses on the crisis's effects on areas affected by digital intermediation. The study's goal is to analyse Airbnb geographies by focusing on short-term rental supply and demand at the intra-urban scale. Using historical data and by adopting a quantitative and spatial data-oriented approach, the work highlights the shifting geographies of digital intermediation. Results show that while the areas that have increased their supply are limited, a large, clustered and contiguous portion of the cities seems to have reversed the exponential growth trend of recent years. Finally, the study offers a reflection on the future of short-term rentals in the post-pandemic city. The case study refers to four Italian cities: Florence, Milan, Rome, and Naples.

Location-based games (LBGs) on smart mobile phones are challenging people's conceptions of public and private space and, in the process, opening up windows of opportunity for subverting the neoliberalisation of urban space associated with the smart city. In the context of the smart city, urban control by corporate, neoliberal interests exerts pressure on players to interweave digital gameplay with everyday life in hybrid urban space. However, players do not passively comply. Rather their subversions and transgressions are integrated into the realisation of the smart city. Drawing on an in-depth empirical study of the popular LBG Pokémon Go, this paper critiques the dynamics inherent in the game design aimed to produce profit from gamers' exercise, exploration and interaction. We trace how smart citizens exploit ambivalences in game design to unleash a form of ‘gamification-from-below’. The paper's insights enrich understandings of the workings of transgression in experiences of digital technologies and mobile media. Finally, it provokes further attention to the paths, possibilities and limits to reconfigure trajectories of the corporate smart city.

The methods and tools of Geographic Information Sciences (GIScience)—spatial analysis, spatial statistics, and geographic information technologies—are increasingly being used in forensic humanitarian projects. In this article we explore ways to parse and analyze social and media releases from the United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to gain an understanding of the death of migrants at the Texas-Mexico border. The methods we used include corpus linguistic (CL)/natural language processing (NLP) and Qualitative Spatial Representation (QSR) and Semantic Triples (ST). Our results indicate that CL/NLP and QSR/ST have the potential to increase and improve deceased migrant case identification by providing a framework for searching for key terms or themes throughout multiple textual sources. In the specific case examined, however, CL/NLP showed that CBP social media focused on drug confiscation and general patrolling activities and were of limited use for tabulating incidences of migrant death. On the other hand, QSR/ST visualizations showed which CBP Stations most frequently reported deceased migrant recoveries (i.e., search and collection of human remains) and with whom they collaborated.

We believe these methods are part of the methodological toolkit needed to lay the ground for what we call Humanitarian GIS—the application of spatial analytical perspectives and tools to genocide studies, spatial forensics, and, in general, human rights topics and events. Within this toolkit, CL/NLP and QSR/ST highlight spatial relationships that are not necessarily mappable in a traditional GIS setting and allow researchers to detect patterns across large corpora of heterogeneous information. The mixing of methodologies and the combination of qualitative and quantitative data in Humanitarian GIS may change our understanding of an ongoing humanitarian crisis and aid in improving and increasing response to such crises.

Recent scholarship in digital geographies has highlighted the possibilities for alternative visions of digital futures contesting the logics and everyday practices of contemporary technocapitalism. Barcelona has emerged as a key site for counter-hegemonic visions, driven by the progressive municipal government's rejection of the corporate smart city model and the emergence of a network of grassroots initiatives promoting “technological sovereignty” (TS). Yet, if and how these visions are able to produce new forms of subjectivity in relation to digital systems has remained an important open question. Critical scholars have highlighted how technocapitalist logics produce subjects as knowable and programmable through data profiles, as responsiblized digital citizens contributing data as a form of civic participation, and as stratified in gendered and racialized hierarchies of technological knowledge and agency. In contrast, this paper explores the production of unruly digital subjects in Barcelona through TS initiatives that work to re-embed the digital in the social, contest hierarchies of technological expertise, and promote forms of collective reflection and experimentation.

Scholars are increasingly starting to engage in analysing non-use of social media among higher education students, but to date there lacks a framework within which to do so. Toward this end, this article identifies four key themes associated with not using social media to develop a typology of social media non-use. The themes are: 1) exclusion which may be owing to access problems or the social environment on social media; 2) distrust owing to difficulties surrounding authenticity, security and online collaboration; 3) distraction as a result of overwhelming or irrelevant information or communication; and 4) online discrimination. However, rather than claiming to set up a universal typology of non-use that applies to all higher education settings, we are promoting a new agenda for thinking about non-use of social media which is attentive to specific educational contexts. Basing our argument on research on international distance education students at the University of South Africa, we argue that any analysis should take a reflective and evolving stance which considers the multi-dimensional, temporally modulating nature of non-use that is sensitive to both student agency and the significance of the specific educational and geographic context. Moreover, the attention to African international distance education students is an important relocation, as thus far, typologies of social media have predominately been based on empirical case studies from ‘Western’ centres and imperatives. Placing African students centre stage realigns typologies of social media, illustrating and legitimizing the many centres from which social media non-use may be analysed and understood.