Understanding Yik Yak: Location-based sociability and the communication of place

Abstract

Yik Yak was a location-based social application that allowed users to anonymously create, read, and respond to posts made within a few mile radius. This paper reports on six months of ethnographic work and interviews performed with 18 Yik Yak users. We argue that one of Yik Yak’s primary functions was to communicate about place and to find new ways to connect abstractly with the local social situation. The data detailed in this article contributes to the growing literature on the spatial and social impacts of locative media.

Coextensive space: virtual reality and the developing relationship between the body, the digital and physical space

“…At the same time, this concept also resonates with other media technologies that effectively blur the boundaries between the physical and the digital aspects of daily life. This kind of blurring can readily be identified with locative media (Frith and Saker, 2017; Saker and Frith, 2018). And this is, especially, the case with early location-based social networking sites (LBSNs).…”

“…A recurring description of the kind of experience commonly associated with VR is the 'feeling of being present in an environment' (Schroeder, 2010: 25; see all Rubin, 2018). More succinctly, in much of the literature surrounding this technology, the elicited feeling is defined as 'being there' (Saker and Frith, 2019;Bailenson, 2018;Evans, 2018;Schroeder, 2010;Schubert, 2009;Slater and Wilbur, 1997). Helpfully, Bailenson (2018) provides a vivid account of precisely what this sensation looks like when he describes Mark Zuckerberg's visit to the multisensory room in the Virtual Human Interactive Lab (VHIL) at Stanford University in March 2014.…”

“…Instead, it is commonly employed to describe the effect of emerging digital technologies and the renaissance of VR as a realisable possibility (Evans, 2018). Nonetheless, it remains important to develop an appreciation of the virtual that engages with its chronological roots.…”

“…And while VR continued to grow in various ways throughout the 'halcyon days of VR culture' (Evans, 2018: 27), only a limited number of systems were publicly available, and these systems ranged from US$10,000 to US$50,000. For Evans (2018), a significant reason for VR's lack of progress is what he refers to as 'technological lag'.…”

From hybrid space to dislocated space: Mobile virtual reality and a third stage of mobile media theory

“…The locative functions of mobile phones have significantly shaped how digital information is organized, and as a growing body of mobile media research has argued, how people experience and engage with their surrounding space (Frith and Saker, 2017). To this end, Campbell (2018) argues that smartphones as locative media shifted how mobile media researchers understand the relationship between mobile media and place.…”