Selected Papers of AoIR 2016: The 17th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers Berlin, Germany / 5-8 October 2016 Suggested  Citation  (APA):  Polson,  E.,  Wilken,  R.,  Halegoua,  G.,  Renninger,  B.,  Russell,  A..  (2016,   October  5-­8).  Intersections  Of  Technology  &  Place.  Paper  presented  at  AoIR  2016:  The  17th  Annual   Conference  of  the  Association  of  Internet  Researchers.  Berlin,  Germany:  AoIR.  Retrieved  from   http://spir.aoir.org.   INTERSECTIONS  OF  TECHNOLOGY  &  PLACE   Erika  Polson   University  of  Denver     Rowan  Wilken   Swinburne  Institute  of  Technology     Germaine  R.  Halegoua   University  of  Kansas     Bryce  J.  Renninger   Rutgers  University     Adrienne  Russell   University  of  Denver     The  five  papers  compiled  here  draw  from  new  ways  of  thinking  about  place,  with  a   particular  focus  on  interrelations  of  space  and  place  with  media  technologies  and   practices.  Following  from  Jansson’s  (2009:  308)  suggestion  that  scholars  consider   intersections  of  communication  and  geography  to  analyze  “how  space  produces   communication  and  how  communication  produces  space”,  this  panel  brings  together  a   series  of  papers  researching  this  nexus.       “Geo-­social  media  &  the  quest  for  place  on-­the-­go”,  evaluates  how  geo-­social  media   can  produce  ‘meaningful  place’  through  a  hybrid  of  online  and  offline  interaction.  The   author  draws  from  ethnographic  studies  of  how  mobile  professionals  (both  business   travelers  and  expatriates)  in  Paris,  Singapore,  and  Bangalore  use  geo-­social  platforms   such  as  meetup.com,  internations.org,  Facebook  groups,  and  Couchsurfing  to   demonstrate  how  online  communication  fuses  with  geographic  co-­presence  to  create   meaningful  place  ‘on-­the-­go’.  The  author  shows  how,  for  a  new  demographic  of  mobile   cosmopolitan  subjects  deployed  into  the  world  by  corporate  interests,  geo-­socially   organized  gatherings  provide  the  answer  for  a  mobile  demographic  that  craves   belonging  and  disdain  commitment,  and  seeks  rootedness  without  stasis.     TRACES  OF  OUR  PASSAGE:  LOCATIVE  MEDIA  AND  THE  CAPTURE   OF  PLACE  DATA   Rowan  Wilken   Swinburne  Institute  of  Technology     The  paper  examines  what  underpins  efforts  by  location-­based  services  (hereafter  LBS)   to  capture  place  data.  The  contention  I  explore  in  this  paper  is  that  the  significance  of   LBS  is  not  just  that  they  locate  us  at  a  particular  point  in  space  (‘pure  geographical   location’  is  rarely  the  primary  consideration  of  LBS  users  or  services),  nor  that  they   locate  us  at  a  particular  moment  in  time  (by  being  at  a  particular  venue  right  now),  but,   rather,  that  they  reveal  a  great  deal  about  complicated  spatio-­temporal  and  socio-­ technically  mediated,  and  socio-­culturally  specific,  patterns  of  movement  through  and   engagements  with  places.       To  conceive  of  LBS  in  this  way—which  draws  from  recent  scholarship  within   anthropology  and  geography—requires  a  reorientation  in  how  we  approach  and  think  of   place,  such  that  places  are  understood  less  as  stable  (if  not  fixed)  sites  and  more  as   deriving  much  of  their  meaning  from  the  possibilities  of  mobility  and  movement   (Cresswell,  2011:  576;;  Agnew,  2011:  325),  and  as  acquiring  ‘dynamic  meaning  as  a   consequence  of  the  location-­based  information  that  is  attached  to  them’  (de  Souza  e   Silva  &  Frith,  2012:  9).       Working  on  social  media  business  models,  José  van  Dijck  (2013:  12)  makes  the  point   that  the  key  revenue  generation  options  of  social  media  firms,  which  I  here  take  to   include  LBS  firms,  involve  the  fostering  of  data  generation  by  users—‘data  generation   has  become  the  primary  object  rather  than  a  by-­product  of  online  sociality’—and  the   subsequent  utilisation  of  this  data  to  ‘influence  traffic  and  monetize  engineered  streams   of  information’,  whether  through  advertising,  analytics  services,  or  via  other  means.  The   capture  of  rich,  place-­based  geodata—what  the  US  tech  industry  sometimes  calls   ‘location  intelligence’—has  become  a  vital  part  of  the  larger  social  media  business   ecosystem  (van  Dijck,  2013).     I  touch  on  a  key  LBS  business  example:  New  York  based  firm  Foursquare.  Long  known   as  a  mobile  social  networking  and  venue  ‘check-­in’  service,  Foursquare  has,  since   2013,  undergone  a  much-­publicised  reorientation  of  its  business  operations.  Among   other  things,  this  has  involved  the  integration  of  new  features  to  its  flagship  Foursquare   app  (and  which  are  linked  to  its  offshoot  app,  Swarm)  that  seek  to  combine  mobile,   social,  and  place-­based  interactions  with  past  and  present  user  data  to  generate  real-­ time  and  even  predictive  venue  recommendations.  Furthermore,  by  drawing  in  place-­ based  insights  from  its  own  users,  and  as  a  result  of  cross-­platform  partnerships  with   other  social  media  firms,  Foursquare  has  been  able  to  build  a  rich  places  databases  –   part  of  its  longer-­term  ambitions  to  position  itself  as  the  ‘location  layer  of  the  internet’.   Based  on  its  expertise  in  this  area,  Foursquare  has  more  recently  repositioned  itself   once  more,  through  the  launch  in  2015  of  Pinpoint,  as  a  ‘location  marketplace’  providing   place-­related  data  and  analytics  services  to  social  media  and  other  businesses  and  to   the  advertising  industry  (Kaplan,  2015).  This,  and  other  cases,  will  be  expanded  on  in   the  longer  version  of  the  paper.     Location-­based  Services  and  ‘Ambulatory  Knowing’     In  the  final  section,  I  suggest  that  an  alternative,  and  potentially  productive,  way  of   understanding  the  underlying  business  interests  of  LBS  companies  is  by  turning  to   anthropologist  Tim  Ingold’s  work  on  maps,  and,  in  particular,  his  notion  of  ‘ambulatory   knowing’.  In  his  book  The  Perception  of  the  Environment,  Ingold  draws  a  lengthy  and   careful  distinction  between  map-­use  and  mapmaking  on  the  one  hand,  and  wayfinding   and  mapping  on  the  other  hand.  Ingold’s  allegiances  lie  with  the  second  pairing.  Arguing   against  cognitive  approaches  to  explaining  human  orientation  (as  developed  by  Alfred   Gell  and  others),  Ingold  (2011:  226)  develops  the  thesis  that  maps,  primarily,  are   indexical  of  movement  (not  of  topographical  features  as  understood  by  an  individual).   For  Ingold,  ‘our  perception  of  the  environment  [...]  is  forged  not  in  the  ascent  from  the   myopic,  local  perspective  to  a  panoptic,  global  one  [the  bird’s-­eye  view],  but  in  the   passage  from  place  to  place’  (227).  ‘Every  “somewhere”’,  he  writes,  ‘is  not  a  location  in   space  but  a  position  on  a  path  of  movement’  (227).  Ingold’s  central  contention  is,  thus,   ‘that  people’s  knowledge  of  the  environment  undergoes  continuous  formation  in  the  very   course  of  their  moving  about  in  it’  (230)  –  regardless  of  whether  this  environment  is   familiar  to  them  or  not.  As  he  explains:     [W]e  know  as  we  go,  not  before  we  go.  Such  ambulatory  knowing  –  or   knowledgeable  ambulating  –  cannot  be  accommodated  within  the  terms  of  the   conventional  dichotomy  between  mapmaking  and  map-­using.  The  traveller  [...]   who  knows  as  he  goes  is  neither  making  a  map  nor  using  one.  He  is,  quite   simply,  mapping.  (230-­231)     This  is  an  important  passage  insofar  as  it  draws  out  the  processual  and  perceptual   qualities  of  wayfinding  and  mapping,  as  he  understands  them.  Ingold  is  clear  that   mapping,  as  an  embodied  process  –  ‘the  renactment,  in  narrative  gesture,  of  the   experience  of  moving  from  place  to  place  within  a  region’  (232)  –  is  not  synonymous   with  mapmaking.  Nor,  he  argues,  is  wayfinding  synonymous  with  navigation.  On  this   second  distinction,  Ingold  argues  that  ‘locating’  oneself  is  less  about  the  determination   of  longitude/latitude  coordinates  than  it  is  about  ‘situating  that  position  within  the  matrix   of  movement’  (237).  For  the  wayfinder,  he  suggests,  ‘every  place  holds  within  it   memories  of  previous  arrivals  and  departures,  as  well  as  expectations  of  how  one  may   reach  it,  or  reach  other  places  from  it’  (237).  That  is  to  say,  ‘places  enfold  the  passage   of  time’  (237-­238),  they  ‘figure  not  as  locations  in  space  but  as  specific  vortices  in  a   current  of  movement,  of  innumerable  journeys  actually  made’  (238)     My  contention  here  is  that  it  is  wayfinding  and  mapping  (not  mapmaking  or  map-­use)   that  is  conceivably  of  greatest  interest  to  location-­based  services  companies.  It  is  these   rich,  embodied  practices,  and  the  ‘current  of  movement’  of  which  they  are  a  part,  that   holds  greatest,  long-­term  value  for  them  and  what  these  companies’  efforts  in  relation  to   geodemographic  profiling,  API  use,  and  the  population  of  places  databases,  and  so  on,   are  ultimately  trying  to  capture.  While  map-­use  and  map-­making  are  obviously   encouraged  (not  least  by  firms  like  Google  and  Apple,  among  others),  the  longer  term   ambition  –  often  articulated,  most  notably  by  Foursquare,  as  the  desire  to  construct  the   ‘location  underlayer  of  the  internet’  –  is  to  be  able  to  make  sense  of  the  less  tangible  yet   arguably  richer  store  of  knowledge,  motivations,  behaviours,  social  connections,  and  so   forth,  that  are  part-­and-­parcel  (as  Ingold  conceives  of  them)  of  wayfinding  and  mapping.     References     Agnew,  JA  (2011)  ‘Space  and  Place’.  In:  Agnew  JA  &  Livingstone  DN  (eds)  The  SAGE   Handbook  of  Geographical  Knowledge.  London:  SAGE.     Cresswell,  T  (2011)  ‘Mobility’.  In:  Agnew  JA  &  Livingstone  DN  (eds)  The  SAGE   Handbook  of  Geographical  Knowledge.  London:  SAGE.     de  Souza  e  Silva,  A  &  Frith,  J  (2012)  Mobile  Interfaces  in  Public  Spaces.  New  York:   Routledge.     Ingold,  T  (2011)  Perception  of  the  Environment:  Essays  on  Livelihood,  Dwelling  and   Skill.  London:  Routledge.     Kaplan,  D  (2015)  With  Pinpoint,  Foursquare’s  now  a  location  marketplace,   GeoMarketing,  April  14,  http://www.geomarketing.com/with-­pinpoint-­foursquares-­now-­a-­ location-­marketplace.     van  Dijck,  J  (2013)  The  Culture  of  Connectivity.  New  York:  Oxford  University  Press.   GEO-­SOCIAL  MEDIA  &  THE  QUEST  FOR  PLACE  ON-­THE-­GO   Erika  Polson   University  of  Denver     Innovations  in  mobile  data  applications  have  opened  up  new  ways  of  experiencing   ‘place’,  and  not  just  in  terms  of  virtual  worlds.  In  this  paper,  I  suggest  that  users  of  geo-­ social  media  are  creating  new  forms  of  offline  ‘place’  that  open  up  geographically  based   sociality  to  a  growing  number  of  professionals  who  live  mobile  or  transient  lives.   Drawing  from  ethnographic  studies  of  how  mobile  professionals  (both  business  travelers   and  expatriates)  in  Paris,  Singapore,  and  Bangalore  use  geo-­social  platforms  such  as   meetup.com,  internations.org,  Facebook  groups,  and  Couchsurfing,  I  demonstrate  how   online  communication  fuses  with  geographic  co-­presence  to  create  meaningful  place   ‘on-­the-­go’.  I  also  consider  new  forms  of  exclusion  that  operate  in  this  techno-­social   arranging  of  place.       The  New  Expats     This  research  provides  insights  into  a  new  figure:  the  lonely  cosmopolitan  subject   deployed  into  the  world  by  corporate  interests,  using  digital  media  to  come  together  ad   hoc,  creating  their  own  spaces  in  a  network  of  global  cities.  As  corporations  ramp  up   ‘workforce  globalization’  and  young  professionals  increasingly  pursue  opportunities  to   work  abroad,  social  entrepreneurs  use  online  platforms  to  create  offline  social  events   where  foreigners  may  gather  face-­to-­face.       Sharing  ethnographic  stories  of  such  groups  from  three  global  cities,  I  illustrate  how  a   new  generation  of  expatriates  uses  location  technologies  to  create  mobile  ‘places’  and   access  drop-­in  communities  along  a  web  of  global  cities.  In  my  talk,  I  will  briefly   describe  this  new  demographic  and  its  frictions,  such  as  how  mobile  professionals  crave   belonging  and  disdain  commitment,  and  seek  rootedness  without  stasis.       Communication  and  the  Social  Constitution  of  Place     My  conception  of  ‘place’  is  informed  by  researchers  from  many  disciplines,  who  have   increasingly  come  to  see  places  as  constituted  by  relationships,  memories,  knowledge,   cultural  practices,  and  so  on,  rather  than  simply  geographically.  Along  these  lines,   scholars  have  demonstrated  places  to  be  social,  gendered,  flexible,  extendable  across   distance,  and  socially  constituted  through  interaction  and  everyday  routines  (e.g.   Lefebvre,  1991;;  Massey,  1994;;  Appadurai,  1996;;  and  Cresswell,  1996  respectively).       Internet  and  communication  researchers  have  entered  this  conversation  through  what  is   referred  to  as  the  spatial  turn,  or  mobility  turn,  of  media  studies  (e.g.  Falkheimer  and   Jansson,  2006).  Along  these  lines,  communication  is  seen  as  productive  of  place  itself.   For  example,  Caldas-­Coulthard  and  Iedema  (2008)  point  out  how  through  recurring   practices  of  communication  and  social  engagement,  the  production  of  new  meanings   and  feelings  of  belonging  and  attachment  to  a  place  may  occur.  As  Augé  notes  (citing   Descombes),  finding  a  place  where  one  belongs  is  about  finding  comfort  in  “the  ability  to   make  oneself  understood  without  too  much  difficulty,  and  to  follow  the  reasoning  of   others  without  the  need  for  long  explanations”  (1995,  p.  108).       Online  practices  play  an  important  role  in  creating  this  rhetorical  sense  of  place  and,  in   fact,  scholars  increasingly  acknowledge  that  meaningful  places  may  even  be  virtual   ones  (e.g.  Moores  &  Metykova,  2009;;  Golub,  2010).  Parallel  to  this  strand  of  thinking  is   a  growing  awareness  of  the  connection  between  online  and  offline  environments  in   meaning  making.  A  growing  seamlessness  of  interrelations  between  digital  and  face-­to-­ face  communication  suggests  that  the  relationship  between  online  and  offline  sociality   will  become  increasingly  taken  for  granted  (Andersson,  2012).  In  fact,  according  to   Andersson,  media  should  be  seen  not  only  as  used  within  everyday  territories  but  also   as  playing  a  “vital  role  in  the  constitution  of  the  territories,  be  it  the  home,  or  the  city  one   resides  in”  (p.  12).       These  strands  of  thinking  on  place  (that  places  are  constituted  through  social  relations   and  communication,  combining  on-­  and  offline  practices)  create  a  conceptual  starting-­ point  for  examining  how  the  series  of  digital  practices  explored  here  facilitate  place-­ making  processes  through  a  hybrid  of  online  and  face-­to-­face  communication.  As  I   contend  in  this  paper,  much  of  this  communication  ‘work’  can  be  done  online,  through   geo-­social  media  apps  that  then  allow  users  to  manifest  their  online  connectivity  to   create  a  sense  of  belonging  in  offline  space.         Mobile  Places     In  this  section  of  the  talk,  I  explore  how  geo-­social  media  applications  produce  such   new  places  in  ways  that  enable  mobility  and  transience.  The  main  focus  of  this  section   is  on  meetup.com—an  online  tool  specifically  meant  to  create  user-­generated  and  -­ defined  community  groupings  that  come  together  in  physical  space  with  little  or  no   commitment  or  prior  knowledge  among  participants—but  draws  from  other  geo-­social   platforms  as  well.       I  discuss  both  benefits  and  challenges  that  emerge  as  people  participate  in  mobile   place-­making.  For  example,  while  geo-­social  media  act  as  mobile  ‘emplacement   platforms’  that  enable  users  to  create  and  access  places  on  the  go,  expectations  of  the   relational  experience  of  place  (e.g.  ‘community’)  seem  to  suffer  as  participants  are  met   with  a  lack  of  commitment,  trust,  and  history.  At  the  same  time,  new  forms  of  agency   are  produced  as  mobile  subjects  are  emboldened  to  enter  new  and  unknown   geographic  locations  knowing  that  they  are  integrated  into  a  network.       References     Andersson,  M.  (2012,  May).  Media  and  migration  through  the  lens  of  mediatization  and   transnationalism.  Paper  presented  to  the  Philosophy  of  Communication  Division  at  the   annual  ICA  conference,  Phoenix,  AZ.     Appadurai,  A.  (1996).  Modernity  at  large:  Cultural  dimensions  of  globalization.   Minneapolis:  University  of  Minnesota  Press.     Augé,  M.  (1995).  Non-­places:  Introduction  to  an  anthropology  of  supermodernity.   London,  England:  Verso.     Caldas-­Coulthard,  C.  R.,  &  Iedema,  R.  (Eds.).  (2008).  Identity  trouble:  Critical  discourse   and  contested  identities.  New  York,  NY:  Palgrave  Macmillan.       Lefebvre,  H.  (1991).  The  production  of  space.  Malden,  MA:  Blackwell.     Cresswell,  T.  (1996).  In  place  /  Out  of  place:  Geography,  ideology,  and  transgression.   Minneapolis:  University  of  Minnesota  Press.     Descombes,  V.  (1987).  Proust,  philosophie  du  roman.  Paris,  France:  Editions  de  Minuit.   Golub,  A.  (2010).  Being  in  the  world  (of  Warcraft):  Raiding,  realism  and  knowledge   production  in  a  massively  multiplayer  online  game.  Anthropological  Quarterly,  83(1),   17–46.     Falkheimer,  J.,  Jansson,  A.  (eds).  (2006).  Geographies  of  communication:  The  spatial   turn  in  media  studies.  Gothenburg:  Nordicom.     Massey,  D.  (1994).  Space,  place  &  gender.  Minneapolis:  University  of  Minnesota  Press.     Moores,  S.,  &  Metykova,  M.  (2009).  Knowing  how  to  get  around:  Place,  migration,  and   communication.  The  Communication  Review,  12,  313–326.       “WE  KNOW  THAT  RIGHT  NOW  WE  ARE  NOT  FUNKY:”   PLACEMAKING  STRATEGIES  IN  SMART  CITY  DEVELOPMENT     Germaine  R.  Halegoua   University  of  Kansas     Developers  of  ubiquitous  or  smart  cities  built  from  the  ground  up  have  reluctantly  cited   problems  in  attracting  residents,  talent,  and  businesses  to  their  fabricated  urban   environments.  Professional  placemakers  have  noted  issues  in  producing  these  cities  as   places  in  which  people  who  are  familiar  with  the  amenities  and  social  life  of  urban   environments  would  like  to  live.  For  example,  New  Songdo,  a  ubiquitous  city  in  South   Korea,  has  been  critiqued  as  a  “consciously  planned,  somewhat  artificial  city  with  a   modern  functionalist  face”  and  because  of  this,  it  will  be  challenging  to  reinvent  as  “lively   and  attractive”  (Oosterman,  2012).  Even  the  city’s  developer  Stanley  Gale  agrees  that   the  character  of  a  city  like  Songdo  will  be  difficult  to  cultivate  from  scratch,  and   emphasizes  the  role  of  urban  programming  and  planning  in  constructing  even  the  most   mundane,  seemingly  organic  elements  of  urban  culture:  “We  know  that  right  now  we  are   not  funky.  We  need  artists,  internet  entrepreneurs,  fashion  designers,  so  we  are  building   incubator  spaces  in  the  city  to  try  to  get  the  mix  right.  You  can’t  manufacture  grit,  but   you  can  encourage  it”  (Keeton,  2012).  In  their  current  form,  cities  like  Songdo  fulfill   policy  initiatives  of  technology  development  and  global  entrepreneurship,  but  tend  to   disregard  urban  experience,  community  efficacy,  and  social  interactions  in  their   construction.  The  socio-­cultural  factors,  social  networks,  and  cultural  variation  that  lead   to  the  success  and  sustainability  of  urban  spaces  has  not  emerged  organically  in   ubiquitous  cities,  but  is  being  planned  and  orchestrated  by  people  other  than  the   residents  themselves.     Several  examples  evidence  a  global  trend  of  planning,  designing,  and  constructing  a   city  from  scratch  with  extensive  digital  communications  networks  and  infrastructures  in   mind.  Some  of  these  examples  that  have  emerged  over  the  past  decade  include  South   Korea’s  extensive  network  of  ubiquitous  cities  or  U-­cities  (cities  that  universally  embed   ubiquitous  computing  opportunities  into  the  built  environment),  PlanIT  Valley  in   Portugal,  Konza  Techno  City  in  Kenya,  and  Masdar  City  in  the  United  Arab  Emirates.   These  “cities  of  the  future”  don  prefixes  such  as  “smart,”  “intelligent,”  “digital,”  and   “ubiquitous”  to  indicate  their  distinction  from  less  digitally  integrated  urban   environments.  Technology  designers,  urban  developers  and  municipal  officials  often   hail  these  urban  environments  as  advanced  and  upgraded  in  terms  of  safety,  efficiency,   transportation,  economic  development,  sustainability,  and  overall  responsiveness  to   urban  structures,  patterns,  and  demands.  In  some  cases,  digital  media  technologies   and  infrastructures  are  planned  even  before  buildings,  roads,  and  other  municipal   services.  In  all  cases,  the  populations  that  will  utilize  these  buildings  and  networks  have   yet  to  move  in.  As  a  result,  professionals  are  charged  with  the  burden  of  constructing   these  cities  as  “places”  anew  as  well.  However,  the  discursive  construction  of  place  is   not  exclusive  to  fabricated  urban  environments.  The  retrofitting  of  a  pre-­existing  city  as   a  “smart  city”  is  also  on  the  rise,  particularly  in  the  US  context.       According  to  previous  literature  reviews  and  discourse  analysis,  smart  cities  are   reported  to  be  built  by  governments  and  corporations  but  are  imagined  to  improve   quality  of  life,  community  and  civic  engagement  alongside  economic  development,   efficient  service  provision  and  sustainable  environments  (Mosannenzadeh  &  Vettorato,   2014).  Although  individual  technologies  like  digital  kiosks,  urban  screens,  media   facades,  and  sensor  technologies  have  been  understood  in  terms  of  placemaking  and   tools  for  civic  participation  (Foth,  Brynskov,  &  Ojala,  2015),  researchers  have  critiqued   smart  cities  projects  in  terms  of  lack  of  citizen  and  community  input  into  placemaking   processes  and  lack  of  participation  in  smart  city  creation  (Townsend,  2013;;   FutureEverything,  2013;;  Halegoua,  2011).  Instead  of  focusing  on  the  ways  in  which   communities  are  included  or  excluded  from  placemaking  efforts  in  smart  cities,  this   paper  analyzes  the  discursive  and  practical  strategies  used  by  smart  city  initiatives  to   social  re-­produce  urban  place.       This  paper  identifies  and  analyzes  some  of  the  ways  in  which  planners,  developers,   municipal  officials,  and  technology  designers  strategically  employ  digital  infrastructure   and  digital  media  in  order  to  reproduce  ubiquitous  or  smart  cities  as  unique,  inhabited,   user-­friendly  urban  places  instead  of  abstract  “spatial  fixes”  (Harvey,  2001).  The   analysis  presented  focuses  on  how  discourses  and  understandings  of  place  are   inscribed  in  the  design  and  implementation  of  ubiquitous  city  technologies,  the   construction  of  the  built  environment,  and  decisions  around  the  branding  and  promotion   of  the  city  as  a  social  space.  Through  a  discourse  analysis  of  social  media  accounts,   discussion  boards,  press  releases  and  popular  press,  town  hall  meetings,  and   interviews  with  people  charged  with  constructing  and  promoting  smart  cities  this  paper   offers  an  analysis  of  the  processes  and  challenges  of  constructing  a  smart  city  as  an   urban  place.       References   Foth,  M.,  Brynskov,  M.,  &  Ojala,  T.  (2015).  Citizen’s  Right  to  the  Digital  City:  Urban   Interfaces,  Activism,  and  Placemaking.  Springer.     FutureEverything.  (2013).  Smart  Citizens  (p.  104).  Retrieved  from   http://futureeverything.org/wp-­content/uploads/2014/03/smartcitizens1.pd     Halegoua,  Germaine.  (2011).  The  Policy  and  Export  of  Ubiquitous  Place:  Investigating   South  Korean  U-­Cities.  In  Marcus  Foth,  Laura  Forlano,  Christine  Satchell,  &  Martin   Gibbs  (Eds.),  From  Social  Butterfly  to  Engaged  Citizen:  Urban  Informatics,  Social   Media,  Ubiquitous  computing,  and  Mobile  Technologt  to  Support  Citizen  Engagement   (pp.  315–334).  Cambridge,  MA:  MIT  Press.     Harvey,  David.  (2001).  Globalization  and  the  “Spatial  Fix.”  Geographische  Revue,  2.     Keeton,  Rachel.  (2012).  New  Songdo  City.  Volume,  (34).     Mosannenzadeh,  F.,  &  Vettorato,  D.  (2014).  Defining  Smart  City.  A  Conceptual   Framework  Based  on  Keyword  Analysis.  Tema.  Journal  of  Land  Use,  Mobility  and   Environment,  0(0).  Retrieved  from   http://www.classiconorroena.unina.it/index.php/tema/article/view/2523     Oosterman,  Arjen.  (2012).  Notes  from  the  Telepresent.  Volume,  (34).     Townsend,  Anthony  M.  (2013).  Smart  Cities:  Big  Data,  Civic  Hackers,  and  the  Quest  for   a  New  Utopia.  New  York:  W.W.  Norton  &  Company.  Retrieved  from   http://www.amazon.com/Smart-­Cities-­Civic-­Hackers-­Utopia/dp/0393082873     GRINDR  KILLED  THE  GAY  BAR,  AND  OTHER  ATTEMPTS  TO  BLAME   SOCIAL  TECHNOLOGIES  FOR  URBAN  DEVELOPMENT       Bryce  J.  Renninger   Rutgers  University     “Grindr  has  changed  everything,”  says  Keith  Shore,  a  buff  38-­ year-­old  hairdresser  and  long-­term  Pines  summer  resident.   He  does  not  mean  for  the  better,  and  he’s  far  from  the  only   one  to  make  that  complaint.  Critics  say  the  popularity  of  the   gay  hook-­up  app  is  ruining  the  island’s  unique  and  delicate   social  ecology.  (Rogers,  2012)     In  the  Summer  of  2012,  New  York  Magazine  published  a  piece  called  “The  Pine's   Summer  of  Discontent,”  in  which  Thomas  Rogers  spoke  to  a  few  visitors  of  the  gay   resort  town,  The  Pines,  on  Fire  Island  off  of  Long  Island  in  New  York.  In  the  short  article,   Rogers  makes  the  claim  that  after  “the  AIDS  epidemic,  recessions,  and,  most  recently,   a  fire  that  destroyed  the  Pines’  legendary  nightclub…now  residents  are  worrying  about   a  new  menace,  one  that  announces  itself  with  a  distinctive  electronic  chime.”  The   menace  is  the  ubiquity  of  the  social  app  Grindr  –  a  location-­based  app  facilitating   connectivity  for  gay  men  within  a  requested  geographical  range  of  each  other.  This  is   hyperbolic  language  indeed.  Surely,  Rogers  does  not  mean  to  equate  the  effect  of   Grindr  to  the  decimating  toll  of  AIDS.  To  make  such  a  claim  that  the  use  of  a  technology   has  created  a  “menace”  should  require  great  evidence.  Instead,  what  he  provides  are   anecdotes  from  three  visitors  to  The  Pines  who  testify  to  the  ways  the  presence  of  the   app  have  changed  the  social  landscape  of  The  Pines.    One  of  the  three  people  he   quotes  is  a  first-­time  visitor  to  The  Pines.     The  goal  of  this  paper  is  to  consider  critiques  that  negatively  link  social  technologies  to   urban  change  as  part  of  a  popular  but  poorly  organized  attempt  to  respond  to  the  impact   of  social  technologies  on  urban  change.  While  it  is  worthwhile  to  seriously  consider  the   ramifications  of  the  use  and  popularity  of  social  technologies,  these  arguments  often   isolate  social  technologies  in  a  way  that  underestimates  the  importance  of  other  social   forces  in  creating  certain  kinds  of  unwelcome  urban  social  change.     This  paper  starts  with  examples  like  the  one  above  of  social  commentary  that  links  the   closing  of  gay  bars  and  the  death  of  gayborhoods  to  the  ascendance  of  gay  social  apps   that  turn  strangers  into  familiars.  After  laying  out  the  ways  that  these  kinds  of  arguments   circulate,  I  make  clear  what  these  arguments  are  valuing.  What,  in  other  words,  is  trying   to  be  salvaged  by  advocating  for  the  continued  thriving  of  gay  bars  and  gayborhoods,   and  what  makes  Grindr  and  social  apps  attractive  villains  in  the  story  of  urban  change   when  there  are  far  more  far-­reaching  and  powerful  forces  that  have  contributed  to  the   kinds  of  urban  change  these  arguments  document?       I  respond  to  the  "Grindr  is  killing  the  gay  bar”  meme  in  two  ways.  First,  I  use   ethnographic  work  I  carried  out  from  2012-­2014  on  Grindr  and  Scruff  to  note  the  ways   that  users  of  these  locative  apps  conceptualize  and  exploit  the  locative  features.  I  pay   particular  attention  to  the  ways  that  these  users  discuss  their  use  in  particular   neighborhoods,  often  the  ones  they  live  in.  What  arises  from  the  ethnographic  data  is  an   unexpected  diversity  of  practices  motivated  by  presence  in  particular  neighborhoods  or   towns.  While  users  are  cognizant  of  space  and  place  when  they  use  these  apps,  the   use  of  these  apps  creates  an  attitude  toward  space  that  is  not  congruent  with  the   perspectives  on  space  that  have  led  to  communities  and  individuals  to  value  the  gay  bar   and  the  gayborhood.     Second,  to  deploy  my  observations  of  actual  use  into  an  attempt  to  be  proactive  about   an  awareness  of  the  role  of  social  technologies  and  their  users  as  social  agents,  I  use   Sclove’s  (1995)  concept  of  a  democratic  approach  to  technology  to  think  about  the   current  phenomenon  of  linking  social  technologies  to  certain  trends  in  urban   development,  or  blaming  these  technologies  for  unwelcome  change.  Considering   Sclove  next  to  scholars  from  science  and  technology  studies  (Hess,  2007),  social  theory   (Sennett,  1974;;  Putnam,  2000),  psychology  (Turkle,  2011,  2015),  sociology  (Ghaziani,   2014),  anthropology  (Gray,  2009)  and  urban  theory  (Jacobs,  1961),  I  interrogate  the   links  commentators  regularly  make—both  casually  and  seriously—between  social   technologies  and  trends  in  urban  development  like  the  closing  of  gay  bars.       To  end,  I  will  briefly  explain  the  similarities  and  differences  between  “Grindr  is  killing  the   gay  bar”  and  other  arguments  levied  against  Uber  and  Airbnb  for  their  contributions  to   urban  change.  In  doing  this,  I  will  show  how  the  arguments  that  critique  social   technologies  for  their  impact  on  urban  life  can  expand  beyond  valuing  gay  bars  and   gayborhoods.  These  arguments  consistently,  though,  act  as  if  the  elimination  of  the   unattractive  social  technologies  would  rid  the  world  of  certain  kinds  of  unattractive  urban   development.  Unless  their  authors  pursue  what  Morozov  (2013)  would  call   “technological  solutionism,”  these  arguments  rarely  imagine  a  world  that  would  foster   the  positive  urban  attributes  that  are  being  lamented.     References     Ghaziani,  A.  (2014).  There  goes  the  gayborhood?.  Princeton,  NJ:  Princeton  UP.     Gray,  M.  (2009).  Out  in  the  country:  Youth,  media,  and  queer  visibility  in  rural  America.   New  York:  NYU  Press.       Hess,  D.  (2007).  Alternative  pathways  in  science  and  industry:  Activism,  innovation,  and   the  environment  in  an  era  of  globalization.  Cambridge,  MA:  MIT  Press.     Jacobs,  J.  (1961).  The  death  and  life  of  great  American  cities.  New  York:  Random   House.     Morozov,  E.  (2013).  To  save  everything,  click  here:  The  folly  of  technological   solutionism.  New  York:  PublicAffairs.     Putnam,  R.  (2000).  Bowling  alone:  The  collapse  and  revival  of  American  community.   New  York:  Simon  &  Schuster.       Rogers,  T.  (2012).  The  Pines’  summer  of  discontent:  It’s  Grindr’s  fault.  New  York   Magazine.  Retrieved  from:  http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/grindr-­fire-­island-­2012-­ 7/     Sclove,  R.  (1995).  Democracy  and  technology.  New  York:  Guilford  Press.     Sennett,  R.  (1974).  The  fall  of  public  man.  New  York:  W.  W.  Norton  &  Company.     Turkle,  S.  (2011).  Alone  Together:  Why  we  expect  more  from  technology  and  less  from   each  other.  New  York:  Basic  Books.     Turkle,  S.  (2015).  Reclaiming  conversation:  The  power  of  talk  in  the  digital  age.  New   York:  Penguin  Press.     DEFINING  SPACE  THROUGH  JOURNALISM  AND  ACTIVISM  AT  THE   2015  PARIS  CLIMATE  SUMMIT     Adrienne  Russell   University  of  Denver     “Space  is  neither  a  subject  nor  an  object  but  rather  a  social  reality.”   -­-­Henri  Lefebvre     Competition  and  conflict  between  older  and  newer  media,  as  well  as  overlap  between   their  various  sensibilities,  are  shaping  the  contemporary  media  environment,  and  in  turn   the  spaces  that  social  and  political  realities  inhabit.  Media  now  readily  flow  back  and   forth  across  geographic  borders,  media  genres  and  platforms,  and  on  and  offline  space   and  place.       Conceptualizing  media  as  space  is  not  unique  applied  to  the  networked  media   environment.  Perhaps  most  famously  Marshall  McLuhan  thought  of  space  and  place  not   strictly  in  terms  of  geography  but  also  in  terms  of  the  social  arrangements  created   though  technology.  In  the  early  1960s,  he  famously  theorized  a  global  village  that  would   create  an  evenly  distributed  shift  in  our  connections  and  perception  of  the  self  and   Others.  McLuhan’s  hyperbolic  but  partially  accurate  prediction  predates  a  more   widespread  recent  “spatial  turn”  by  scholars  in  various  disciplines  who  have  begun   treating  space  as  a  crucial  analytic  considerations,  discarding  the  dominant   understanding  of  space  as  something  simply  locational,  and  instead  considering  it  as   social  (Peters  2012:4).  Jason  Farman  (2013),  for  example,  rejects  the  notion  of  space   as  a  container  that  can  be  filled.  He  writes,  “space  needs  to  be  considered  as   something  that  is  produced  through  use.  It  exists  as  we  interact  with  it—and  those   interactions  dramatically  change  the  essential  character  of  space.”  (9)     By  highlighting  journalistic  and  activist  communication  initiatives  deployed  for  COP21,   the  2015  UN  Climate  Summit  in  Paris,  this  paper  explores  the  ways  journalists  and   activists  imagine,  interact  with,  and  create  media  space  and  in  turn  how  digital   technologies  and  infrastructures  are  influencing  the  concepts  of  space  in  both  the  fields   of  journalism  and  activism.       Indeed,  today’s  international  reporting  is  inseparable  from  technological  infrastructures   that  define  the  conditions  under  which  international  news  is  gathered,  reported,  and   disseminated.  And  similarly,  activist  communication  networks  are  shaped  by  not  only   the  strategies  and  tactics  deployed  by  social  movements  but  also  by  the  tools  and   connection  that  shape  those  networks.  Drawing  from  interviews  with  reporters,  activist   and  tech  developers  behind  key  activist  media  and  journalistic  endeavors  deployed   during  COP21,  as  well  as  analysis  of  related  media  content,  tools  and  practices,  this   paper  demonstrates  the  various  ways  local,  national,  and  global  space  are  shaped   though  this  this  “global”  media  event,  grounded  in  geographic  place-­based  action.       I  argue  not  that  media  is  becoming  more  global,  but  rather  that  the  global  conditions  and   connections  that  do  exist—including  a  more  global  outlook  among  journalists  and  global   ties  among  activists-­-­are  changing  the  representations  and  reality  of  local  contexts.  The   paper  highlights  examples  of  new  emerging  space-­related  practices.  Some  of  these   examples  constitute  what  Appadurai  calls  grassroots  globalization,  or  “social  forms   [that]  are  emerging  to  challenge  and  reverse  this  epistemological  exclusion  and  the   resulting  social  exclusion,  and  to  create  forms  of  communication  and  social  mobilization   that  are  independent  of  the  actions  of  corporate  capital  and  the  nation-­state  system”   (2000:3).  Other  examples  are  less  overtly  challenging  the  powers  but,  nonetheless,   shape  alternative  media  spaces  and  connections.       The  paper  highlights  3  new  players  in  the  journalism  landscape  with  a  global  and  online   presence:  Vice,  Buzzfeed,  and  Huffington  Post,  all  of  which  had  reporters  present  at  the   summit  and  produced  a  high  volume  of  coverage.  In  the  case  of  these  new  journalism   outlets  reporters  are  taking  up  new  practices  and  turning  an  eye  from  the  national  “us”   to  a  more  global  outlook;;  they  are  engaged  in  transnational  collaboration,  sharing  tools,   support  and  training  in  effort  to  strengthen  news  worldwide;;  they  challenge   representations  in  legacy  international  news  by  focusing  on  local  voices  and  expertise.       The  paper  also  explores  several  activist  media  initiatives  that  were  launched  during  the   summit  including  the  following:  Climate  Games,  “a  trans-­media  action  framework,”  or  a   platform  conceived  of  and  built  by  artists,  hackers,  and  activists  that  allowed  activists  to   anonymously  register  for  teams,  download  targets,  and  coordinate  non-­violent  acts  of   civil  disobedience  during  the  2  weeks  of  the  summit;;  350.org  newswire,  the   communication  arm  of  the  NGO  founded  by  climate  activist  and  journalist,  which  in   Paris  become  the  unofficial  newswire  for  activists  at  the  summit  through  its   comprehensive  and  sophisticated  coverage  of  both  the  official  and  unofficial  COP-­ related  news  events;;  and  Place  2  Be  the  de  facto  headquarters  of  international  civil   society  during  the  summit,  housed  in  a  youth  hostile  in  the  center  of  Paris,  and  hub  of   some  of  the  most  innovative  coverage  coming  out  of  Paris.           These  examples  demonstrate  that  there  is  an  emerging  network  and  a  set  of  space-­ related  practices  that  inform  the  work  of  media  activists.  While  activists  are  most  often   responding  to  local  conditions  and  national  policy  and  law,  issues  and  movements  are   often  global  in  the  sense  that  they  1)  they  collaborate  transnationally  to  lend  one   another  technological  support,  training,  and  strategic  advice;;  2)  seek  involvement  and   inspire  participation  and  solidarity  from  people  around  the  world;;  3)  Create  informational   campaign  aimed  at  a  global  community.         In  order  to  understand  the  process  of  abandoning  the  old  and  inventing  the  new   structures  and  spaces,  this  analysis  focuses  too  on  how  space  is  being  reshaped  by  an   increasingly  pervasive  type  of  media  actor,  who  spans  the  space  of  journalism  and   activism,  is  tech  savvy  enough  to  remake  genres,  tools,  platforms,  and  practices,  and  is   dedicated  to  both  the  politics  of  and  the  political  uses  of  networked  digital   communication  tools.  In  the  broadest  sense,  this  research  looks  at  how  these  media   actors  imagine  and  thus  produce  media  space,  in  order  to  help  address  the  questions:   What  are  the  forms  -­  technological  and  thus  social  -­  through  which  spaces  get  made   available  for  use,  and  within  which  particular  sensibilities  are  encouraged.       References     Chadwick,  A.  (2013)  The  Hybrid  Media  System:  Politics  and  Power.  Oxford:  Oxford   University  Press.     Farman,  J.  (2013)  Mobile  Interface  Theory:  Embodied  Space  and  Locative  Media.  New   York,  NY:  Routledge   Lefebvre,  H.  (1991)  The  Production  of  Space.  New  York,  NY:  Blackwell.     Marshall,  M.  (1964)  Understanding  Media.  London:  Routledge.     Peters,  C.  (2012)  “Journalism  to  Go:  The  Changing  Spaces  of  News  Consumption.”   Journalism  Studies  13(5-­6),  695-­705.