Conceptual  Framework  3:  The  role  of  local  information  in  the  era  of  Netlocality  .  54

In order to understand the process of participation (as it will be explained further in this chapter) in the creation of locative stories and locative media as a whole, we need first to delve into the concept of “local.” As a main conceptual spine, this dissertation draws on the seminal work of Gordon & de Souza e Silva (2011), in which the authors propose the concept of net locality. The scholars have as a premise that we live in an era when virtually everything is located or locatable. Based on that, Gordon & de Souza e Silva (2011) raised the questions of what happens to individuals and what societies can do with the affordances of this location-awareness. Net locality is about a transition that will fundamentally alter what means to be local in a globalizing world. These authors argue that the web has merged with our physical spaces and that it is transforming our everyday interactions with the world and each other, being the new organizing logic of the web as well as physical location. The authors believe that what is being organized is not just information, but the physical world that contains it.

Also central to the concept of net locality is the notion of the compression of scale, which means that one may turn to the consumption of information on a number of fronts “from browsing the web to attending a local neighborhood meeting, to using an augmented reality application to see, in a slightly new light, the street you have walked down a hundred times before” (ibid, p. 3). Thus, these scholars state that geography becomes the organizational logic of the web, and location determines what kind of information people are able to see on search engines sites, for example. For

the purpose of this study, it is crucial to understand how people relate to local information and how it might affect the way they perceive their locality. Unlike many studies about locative media that are focused on tourism and visitors to places enhanced by locative media (Bilandzic, Foth & de Luca, 2008), this dissertation deals with residents.

In this work, local information is used in the sense of any information that is geographically related to a certain locality or city, with a focus on local history, local memory, and local knowledge. A broad term such as local information was chosen in order to avoid titles such as “news,” a controversial and questionable concept in the current times (Poindexter, 2012). Due to the lack of specific literature on “local information” with the meaning we use in this work, this study draws on studies on local media, local journalism, community media/journalism, in order to understand how local information impacts residents of a certain locality.

In regards to locative media studies that deal with creating information for outsiders, Bilandzic et al. (2008) developed an application called Cityflocks. The goal was to provide newcomers to the city with local information. In fact, other scholars argue that the local concept is one of the main benefits of user-generated content within the scope of geographical information. One example is Goodchild, who states that, “the most important value of user-generated geographic information may lie in what it can tell us about local activities… that go unnoticed by the world’s media, about life at local level” (2007, p. 220). Along with Goodchild, there is considerable research that relates the value of local knowledge to location-based media, especially with place-based information (see Gordon, 2009; Ludforf, P.J., Priedhorsky, R., Reily, K., Terveen, L., 2007). Gordon (2009) describes how network locality is transforming the social practices of locating things/people and being located by them, and how this individual phenomenon can enable the necessarily collective conditions of local knowledge, by using the case of geocaching, a worldwide game that enable people to hide things in physical space and mark their GPS (global positioning system) coordinates to others to find. This author argues, “as the geospatial grows, the focus on local knowledge will become increasingly important” (p. 34). This scholar suggests that local knowledge within networks is not dependent not only on geographical space but also on network locality – “the experience of interacting with located data within the perceived infinity of global access” (ibid, p. 22). As the author

states: “dispersed groups of people can share place-based knowledge – consider diasporic populations that, through stories, continue to connect with a ‘homeland’. In this sense, what is local or considered home is not necessarily geographically proximate” (p. 24).

Ludford et al. (2007) explores how technologies of location offer new methods for capturing local knowledge and making it available to those who seek it. These scholars point out how people need local place information, such as visitors asking for places to buy souvenirs or longtime residents looking for information when their lives change. This concept is key for this dissertation, because some of our participants are immigrants struggling to adapt to their new landscape of information.

On the other hand, there are other scholars who highlight how the concept of local is often woven into the “marketing” of location-based apps. For instance, Kelley (2014) argues that there is a promise of “persistent access to some form of insider socio-spatial insight about place” (p. 17). Overall, this author argues, that “regardless of the growing ubiquity of smart mobile devices in urban space, participation in geosocial media does not imply that new information is more reflective of the local condition”(p. 18).

There is a continuous discourse that those location-based information apps enable one to always be a local or to discover a locality through the lens of a local.

However, an increasing number of scholars challenge the assumption that data produced by locative and geosocial apps are necessarily local. Dodge & Kitchin (2013), for example, make us to realize that many locative stories are considered

“local” because they have been told by users about particular sites in space, but “there is no way to know, for certain, the connection between users and the geographies where they actively produce geosocial information.”

Along the same lines, Hecht & Gergle (2010) challenge the localness of participation in repositories of user-generated content (UGC) with geospatial components. These authors found 50% of Flickr users contribute local information on average, and over 45 percent of Flickr photos are local to the photographer. In this sense, they conclude that, “an important theoretical direction that must be investigated involves the importance of UGC repositories as sources of place information. The degree to which these repositories are defined by locals versus outsiders is an

important question in this respect” (p. 232). In fact, this is a great concern for which further research is needed. After all, in the era of globalization, residents may well live in networks, perhaps often more knowledgeable about events overseas than about those where they actually live.

Paula Levine (2014) in her chapter “On Common Ground” reminds us “there is also a potential for mobile and locative media to change one’s relationship to a place by introducing distant events or circumstances onto local spaces and making events that are happening elsewhere highly relevant to the immediate, local space” (p.

143). By drawing from the psychological concept of "cognitive dissonance," Levine (2014) proposes "spatial dissonance," which means the "experience of two contradictory spaces (or ideas about a space)" (p. 144). As Levine (2014) explains,

"cognitive dissonance describes a state of mind that arises when two contradictory ideas must be held in mind, for example when information that is presented stands in conflict with strongly held beliefs" (p. 148). Some theories suggest that "we attempt to move away from this state of contradiction by turning away from the new information presented to return to the safety and familiarity of beliefs we previously held" (ibid). Levine (2014) argues that this conflict may also be applied to the ways we think about our relationships with space and place. Although Levine refers to the juxtaposition of spaces by, for example, overlaying certain locations of Baghdad on the map of San Francisco, her concept of spatial dissonance applies to how some participants decided to geotag their stories as they did something similar. An example is overlaying a local map with events that are happening elsewhere in the world.

Levine (2014) writes that locative media can collapse geographies to mix here with there:

By narrating pathways among the geospatial-temporal gaps, participants forge links between familiar places and their relationships to events, locations, and circumstances that normally lie outside of the local borders. Like traveling in unfamiliar countries, these experiences can be opportunities to form new cross-cultural, historical, conceptual, or theoretical connections between local and global (p. 144).

Part of Levine's argument is also the notion that place happens to be local and global at the same time, which is reinforced by the concept of net locality proposed by Gordon & de Souza Silva (2011).

In the UK, for example, the preoccupation with the world beyond the local is anchored in daily experience: the gap year; the web-based materials; transnational publishers; the growing proportion of students from other countries; the proliferation of international exchanges; and conferences (Aldridge, 2007). However, Aldridge also states: “for the majority, then, life is local” (p. 7). If this is true and the majority of people live locally, how do they relate to their locality, what kind of local information is important to them? Aldrige (2007) provides an answer for this question based on research conducted in the UK that has found that much of people’s desire for news of the locality is driven by these practical and material concerns.

1.11. Conceptual Framework 4: Participation in locative media

Participation is constantly addressed in locative media projects (see Bio Mapping, Neighborhood Narratives, Urban Tapestries, Textopia), because many of the arts projects encourage participation, mainly in the production of storytelling and narratives. Participation is approached in different ways by researchers in the field of locative media, but many scholars agree that “participation” in terms of producing content and using mobile applications is key for these sorts of projects, even though the ways to engage citizens remains obscure (Bruns & Humphreys, 2010; Løvlie, 2011; Miller, 2013). Biomapping, for example, is a community-mapping project in which over the last four years more than fifteen hundred people have participated. In the context of regular, local workshops and consultations, participants are wired up with an innovative device which records the wearer’s Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of the emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. People re-explore their local area by walking their neighborhood with the device and on their return, a map is created which visualized points of high and low arousal (biomapping.net).

That said, it seems very relevant to invest in increasing the participation of underserved groups, such as Latinos/as, in the hybrid space. For the purpose of this

dissertation, "participation" is woven together with the concept of user-generated content (UGC) and Web 2.0. Although the latter term is controversial, as some scholars may argue (Keen, 2007), it is unavoidable to use it in this dissertation, because Web 2.0 is entangled with participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009) or with related terms such as “Produsage” proposed by Bruns (2008). As others scholars have pointed out, there is a set of concepts that have been used to describe the digital knowledge production in Western economies: peer production, free software, creative commons, feeds, blogs, cloud computing, social networking, mash-ups, torrents, tags, tweets, and wikis. Despite the different meaning among them, all these terms constitute the era of participation as opposed to broadcast and consumption.

Participation, in this dissertation, is approached in two ways: 1) in the general use of locative media, and 2) in the production of locative storytelling.

User-Generated Content and Participation

It is interesting to note that most of the research on UGC relates to the relationship between citizen journalism/participatory journalism and mainstream media in the scope of online media. Without doubt, this is an interesting point of discussion for this dissertation; after all, past research has provided evidence that location-based media is not yet well integrated into practices of mainstream media, at least in the scope of news organizations (Schmitz Weiss, 2013). Thus, location-based media is still restricted to artistic and participatory initiatives. Taking this into account, it is important to stress that even though this work draws on the existing literature on UGC, some lines of thinking may not apply into location-based media, considering that the duality UGC versus mainstream media is not within the scope of this dissertation. It is also important to clarify that although several researchers relate UGC with political knowledge and political participation (Östman, 2012; Dylko, I.

and Mccluskey, M, 2012; Dylko, 2014), this dissertation does not address

“participation” in the sense of deliberative democracy or political involvement. Rather, this work is interested in the intersection of the production of user-generated content with locative media in a way that reflects our concern of the

segregation of the hybrid space and specifically, the production of locative storytelling.

In this sense, there are a few works that contemplate this combination.

FitzGerald (2012), for instance, explores how the emerging trends of the Web 2.0 with location information may be used to provide informal learning opportunities and to improve the creation of UGC within the scope of location-based media. This author aimed to develop a set of guidelines for the creation of content. Along the same lines, Hamilton (2009) combines practices of locative media (experiential mapping and geo-spatial annotation) with aspects of online participatory culture.

This dissertation draws on the optimistic academic rhetoric and assumption that the provision of interactive features and solicitations of user-generated content (UGC) foster empowerment and democratization (e.g.: Benkler, 2006; Chung, 2007;

Gillmor, 2004; Shirky, 2008). However, despite this dissertation defending participation as being a positive outcome, I recognize that several scholars have arguably a dystopian view of “participation,” in the context of UGC, as exploitation.

Petersen (2008), for example, paraphrases the publisher and coiner of the Web 2.0 Tim O’Reilly, by saying that the “architecture of participation,” also coined by Reilly, sometimes turns into “architecture of exploitation.” Petersen (2008) exemplifies two different strategies within the architecture of exploitation that capitalism can benefit from: 1) Through a distributed architecture of participation, companies can piggyback on user-generated content by archiving it and making interfaces or using strategies such as Google’s Adsense program. 2) Designing platforms for user-generated content, such as Youtube, Flickr, Myspace and Facebook.

In this same line of thinking, Jönsson and Örnebring (2011) question if UGC is an authentic empowering tool or gives a pseudo sense of participation by analyzing newspapers in the UK and Sweden. What it is interesting for the scope of this dissertation, and from which I draw, is the fact that the authors examine the media-reader relationship by looking at (1) degree of participation, i.e., how much effort is required of audience members in order to participate; and (2) type of content, i.e., the content being produced primarily private or public in character and if public, is it primarily information-oriented or primarily entertainment-oriented? The authors suggest that participation and involvement are not binary categories, where people either participate or do not participate because there are a number of online tools for

participation and interaction available. As they point out, “some of them require extensive prior knowledge to use (e.g. open source programming project management software), others require virtually no knowledge (e.g. making comments on a blog), some virtually demand that audience members become active producers (e.g. wikis), other make very few demands on audience members (e.g. online polls), and so on.”

Jönsson and Örnebring (2011) make a distinction between features that require a low level of participation and that address audience members as consumers; a medium level participation and that address audience members as prosumers; and finally, features that require a high level of participation and that address audience members as producers. This categorization is based on Örnebring (2008), Thurman (2008), and Hermida & Thurman (2008). For this dissertation, participants are approached as producers, as they have to actively compose stories and geotag them.

In other words, the degree of participation required for this study refers to the writing of a story about a place which may include visiting a place to take a picture , recalling memories, and collecting historical or current information about the place.

In terms of type of content, Jönsson and Örnebring (2011) saw three primary possibilities that users can create: information-oriented content, entertainment/popular culture-oriented content, and personal/social/expressive-oriented content. Their research showed that online newspapers in Sweden and the United Kingdom do allow for citizens/readers to participate and be a more active part in the mediated public sphere, but that users are mostly empowered to create popular culture-oriented content and personal/everyday life oriented content rather than news/informational content. For this dissertation, content have to reflect the memories, history, or stories of a certain location. Thus, the type of content can be historical or contemporary, as long it is about a place.

Considering that the literature tends to contrast UGC to mainstream media, Jönson and Örnebring (2011) conclude that UGC could represent new opportunities for representation and recognition for groups outside the mainstream, but currently does not. Furthermore, they argue that UGC represents both an empowerment of citizens and an “interactive illusion.”

Another common theme in the literature of UGC and participation on the Web is what factors motivate or constitute rewards for participants in these social

computing systems. Many of these concerns are raised in an attempt to understand how to increase participation. Some of this research has found that non-monetary reasons motivate users to produce content such as gaining attention (Huberman, Romero, and Wu, 2009), building reputation and status (Ling, Beenen, Ludford, Wang, Chang, Li,... & Kraut, 2005) or virtual points (Nam, Ackerman, & Adamic, 2009; Yang, Ackerman, & Adamic, 2011).

For the relevance of this research, Ghosh (2012) points out that several UGC sites failed, either immediately or eventually, for lack of contributions. He states that there are two characteristics of UGC: participation is voluntary, and even after having decided to participate, contributors can decide how much effort to put into their contributions, which affects the quality of the output they produce.

Dodge & Kitchin (2013) state that the reason why people participate is to

“connect socially, communicative meaningfully, and contribute collectively" (p. 20).

These authors also raise the question of how one can ensure that the model of UGC is sustainable. Will participants continue to produce content next week, next month, and next year? Moreover, there also concerns over the unpredictability of crowds, their narrow demographic profile, the quality and consistency of content and metadata created across diversely skilled/motivated individuals, and how to provide documented degrees of reliability and generate a sense of trustworthiness.

The participation in locative media, however, is usually explored among people who are already inclined to adopt new technologies or who are already tech-savvy. Some researchers, for example, conducted a qualitative study about mobile

The participation in locative media, however, is usually explored among people who are already inclined to adopt new technologies or who are already tech-savvy. Some researchers, for example, conducted a qualitative study about mobile