‘You’re virtually there’: Mobile communication practices, locational information sharing and place attachment

Abstract

Mobility is a fact of contemporary everyday life. Especially, in big metropolises everyday life revolves around a continuous movement, which serve the need of catching up with the fast pace of metropolitan life. Such mobilities can alter our perception of space and time, leading us to think of distances as shrinking and places becoming closer. This leads to material, social and cultural reconfigurations (Bærenholdt and Granås, 2008) and reinforces the question of distance and proximity in maintaining social and familial relationships. Today, face–to–face social interactions are supplemented with what Urry (2007) calls imagined presence. This imagined presence, or “the transport to a virtual place” is ‘affected through the images of places and peoples appearing on, and moving across, multiple print and visual media’.. This paper discusses what happens to imagined presence when those images are mobile, geo–tagged and shared within a network. Do mobile and locative media practices enhance our sense of place by triggering a “nostalgic ode to home” and displacing us from the co–present situation? Or, do they foster bonding with places by creating a sense of belonging and by enabling us to carry our existing social relationships wherever we go? In order to answer these questions in this article, the relationships among social production of space, mobility, imagined presence and sense of place (place attachment) are analysed drawing on the findings of two studies conducted in 2011 and 2012, in London.

'Some Birds Sound the Same but Most Sing Different': Exploring Multisensory Place-Attachment and Wellbeing with Former Refugees in Nelson, Aotearoa New Zealand

“…How do everyday multisensory experiences shape feelings of place-attachment and wellbeing for female Chin and Kayan former refugees in Nelson, Aotearoa New Zealand? To understand the various factors influencing individual multisensory experience, I drew upon relevant literature to explore neurophysiological processes of sensory perception and memory (Baddeley et al, 2009;Damasio, 2000); sociocultural encounters (Howes & Classen, 2014;Law, 2001;Tuan, 1991); the use of mobile communication technologies (Elliot & Urry, 2010;Marlowe, 2017;McNeill, 1994;Ozkul, 2013); geographic processes of place-agency (Ash & Simpson, 2016;Larsen & Johnson, 2016;McCormack, 2017), and the beats, rhythms, cycles, and structures of time (Edensor, 2010;Harvey, 1994;Lefebvre, 2004;Potts, 2015;Seamon, 1980). This extensive body of interdisciplinary research guided the development of the following research sub-questions: The objective of this research was threefold, with an emphasis on exploring unique methods and ways of 'doing' multisensory research (Pink, 2015); enhancing knowledge in the fields of place-attachment and wellbeing; and applying this knowledge in a real world setting.…”

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

“…As a result of its popularity, Foursquare has been the subject of much research. The application has been examined in the context of modifying approaches to mobility (Frith, 2013), sociability (Bertel, 2013;Silva and Frith, 2010;Frith, 2014;Licoppe, 2014), place Humphreys and Liao, 2013;Ozkul, 2013), and gamification (Frith, 2013;Saker and Evans, 2016b).…”

Here, I Used to Be

“…Studies of memory places show how place can become integral to understanding how memories are evoked for and experienced by their visitors. In contrast to previous studies that link place to collective and public memory, we are interested in extending research on the links between place and individual memory (Ozkul, 2013; Sheringham, 2009). We specifically focus on how and to what extent new media of memory, specifically location-aware mobile applications, transform how individuals experience and practice the relationship between memory and place.…”