Location-based mobile games (LBMGs) are games that people play while moving through physical spaces. Research has shown that they can impact individuals’ experience of their surrounding space and their mobility decisions. Extending that research, this article looks at the gaming elements of the location-based social network (LBSN) Foursquare, analyzing how Foursquare’s gaming elements can impact people’s mobility decisions. Through an analysis of qualitative interviews, the goal of this study is to draw from the concepts of hybrid space, spatial legibility, and gamification to show how Foursquare’s gaming elements can add a playful layer to physical spaces and discuss the impacts of the application designers’ goal of turning “life into a game.”

A debate is currently raging regarding the value of anonymity online. On one side of the debate is Facebook, the world's largest social network site. Facebook demands that people use their real names and is one of the leading forces behind the push towards a "real name" Internet. On the other side of the debate are scholars such as danah boyd and Bernie Hogan and sites such as 4chan and Reddit that view anonymity and pseudonymity as important to how people construct identity online. While much has been written about the benefits of anonymity and pseudonymity, there is a lack of published research examining specific practices enabled by pseudonyms. This article provides a detailed account of the behaviors enabled through pseudonymous identity construction through a case study of the subreddit r/gonewild. The main contribution of the article is to provide a specific account of the costs of a totalizing embrace of the "real name" Internet.

This article examines the emergence of conspiracy theories linking COVID-19 with 5G, with a focus on Australia, the United States and United Kingdom. The article is in two parts. The first details long-standing concerns around mobile technologies and infrastructures before showing how they translate to specific worries about 5G technology. The second shows how these fears have fuelled specific conspiracies connecting 5G with COVID-19, how they have animated protests and acts of vandalism that have occurred during the pandemic, and the ongoing engagement of conspiracists with official inquiries into 5G. Finally, we argue that a productive way to understand what is happening with 5G is to look beyond conspiracy theories to a larger set of concerns. We argue that the battle for control of 5G infrastructure can be productively understood in geopolitical terms, as forms of economic statecraft, which partly explains why governments are increasingly concerned about countering misinformation and disinformation around 5G.

Early theories of the internet imagined that individuals would begin living most of their lives online, decreasing the importance of physical mobility and urban spaces. With the development of internet-enabled mobile phones, these early predictions have been proven false. The internet has not decreased the importance of physical mobility; instead, the digital information of the internet has begun to merge with physical space, leading to new types of hybrid spaces. These hybrid spaces are becoming increasingly common, and they may change the way physical space is negotiated and understood. At this early juncture, however, it is crucial to critically examine the development of hybrid spaces and how they may lead to issues of exclusion and exacerbate issues of access. This essay takes a critical approach to the development of hybrid spaces, arguing that what is often lost in discourses about these new understandings of space are questions of who gets to experience this convergence of the digital and the physical.

This study conceptualizes the new spatial logic created by the social use of location aware mobile technologies, analyzing how mobile communities are formed by the mapping of social networks in urban spaces. It explores two main areas with the goal of understanding how locative mobile social networks (LMSNs) challenge the traditional logic of networks. First, it conceptualizes LMSNs by comparing them to (1) traditional transportation and communication networks, and (2) mobile social networks (MSNs). Second, the paper discusses potential social implications of LMSNs, such as privacy, surveillance, and social exclusion.

Location-based social networks (LBSNs) are mobile applications that allow people to share their physical location with friends through their mobile device. The sharing of location is a relatively new form of computer-mediated communication, and there is a lack of existing research examining the coor- (2011) show, newer mobile applications are often built around the importance of physical location. These applications, commonly referred to as location-based services, use the location-aware capabilities of newer mobile phones to provide people with information about their surroundings. The information these applications provide includes locations of historical sites, restaurant reviews, and geotagged narratives about specific locations. Increasingly, individuals also use mobile applications to share their location with friends. Mobile applications that allow for social location sharing are called location-based social networks (LBSNs), and they are a growing subset of location-based services.With the growth of location-aware mobile applications, people are increasingly able to share their location in multiple ways, whether through check-ins on popular LBSNs like Foursquare, geotagged tweets, or geotagged photos on Flickr. To further our understanding of the social sharing of location information, this study provides a theoretically and qualitatively grounded examination of the mobile communication practices of Foursquare users. The data reported in this study is drawn from 36 interviews of frequent Foursquare users and focuses on two independent yet interrelated areas: the role physical location plays in the coordination practices of Foursquare users and the different ways in which * Accepted by previous editor Maria Bakardjieva Foursquare users interpret the meaning of the application. Now that over 50% of adults in the United States own location-aware smartphones (Smith, 2013), it is important for researchers to develop frameworks for understanding how the addition of physical location to mobile communication may impact social practices. This study helps develop a framework that will be valuable for future social scientific approaches to location-based services in two significant ways. First, I show that to understand how people use LBSNs, we must understand the physical spaces in which they use the applications. Unlike with text messaging or voice calls, understanding the location of users is necessary for analyzing why they share their location and whether they use their location to coordinate with others. Secondly, this article introduces a heuristic framework for understanding the different ways people use applications like Foursquare. The data reported here reveals four primary types of Foursquare users, and this taxonomy of users can be useful for future research seeking to develop and test hypotheses of usage patterns. In addition, this article shows how these different uses complicate Foursquare's utility as a tool for mobile coordination because people cannot be sure why others are sharing their location...

Research in the field of mobile communication studies (MCS) has generally moved away from focusing on how mobile phones distract users from their physical environment to considering how the experience of space and place can be enhanced by locative smartphone applications. This article argues that trajectory may be complicated by the emergence of a new type of mobile technology: mobile virtual reality (MVR). While an increasing number of handsets are specifically developed with MVR in mind, there is little to no research that situates this phenomenon within the continuum of MCS. The intention of this paper is accordingly twofold. First, the article conceptualizes MVR as a connective tissue between the two sequential tropes of MCS: physical distraction and spatial enhancement. Second, the article introduces the concept of ‘dislocated space’ as a way of understanding the embodied space MVR might configure.

This article analyzes 4 months of popular press articles from major publications about location-aware mobile phones. Our results identify 2 main areas: the control these devices offer over public spaces and the lack of control users have over their location information. This lack of control is often framed as a lack of privacy. We argue that the ability to control and personalize public spaces is not new because previous types of portable media already allowed users to manage interactions with public spaces. However, issues of privacy and control over public spaces are more pronounced with location-aware technologies. Our conclusions suggest that popular press discourses often overlook more complex social issues related to privacy in public spaces.