The article builds upon critical border studies for the study of the European migration crisis that take into account the digital, both in terms of telecommunications infrastructure and media platforms. In putting forward an approach to migration studies with digital devices, here the emphasis is shifted from "bordering" to "routing." First, the current analytical situation is sketched as one where the "connective" route is contrasted to the "securitised" one, made by European policy and monitoring software. Subsequently, we ask, how are connective migrant routes being made into accounts and issues in social media? Two case studies are presented, each describing routing in terms of the distinctive accounts made of migrant journeying. In the first, routes are seen from the point of view of its curation in Getty Images, and in particular of the images privileged by its social layer. In the image collection, the "sanitised route" (as we call it) gradually leads to a soft landing in Europe, cleansed of anti-refugee sentiment. In the second, we ask how camps and borders are problematized from the point of view of the traveler using TripAdvisor. In the "interrupted tourist route," would-be visitors are concerned with a Europe made unsafe, thereby rerouting their own journeys on the basis of social media commenting. We conclude with reflection about the advantages of employing social media in migration and border studies for the study of "media journeys" as routes from multiple vantage points, developing the idea that route-work also can be understood as platform-work.
social as a controversy tracing associations agency and non-human actors risk and global risks relations of definition cosmopolitan moment neo-cartography critical cartography counter-mapping Social Cartography Risk Cartography Critical Cartography Mapping Strategies Relevant Theoretical Concepts Latour, Beck and Crampton risk infrastructures Methodological Elaborations Venturini, Beck and Kropp, and Parks layer critique controversy mapping fig. 1: Methodological elaboration of cartography theories for issue mapping. the graphic displays a three-layered methodological development. the first layer contains concepts extracted from the works of latour, Beck, and crampton. the second layer contains methodological elaborations on them by Venturini, Beck/Kropp, and parks. the third layer contains the resulting mapping strategies, namely social cartography, risk cartography, and critical cartography.
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