Locative Media and Mediated Localities: An Introduction to Media Geography

Abstract

At present, nearly every media-related subject field appears to be “locative”, or with the prefix “geo” attached, be it the discussion on geoart, geosurveillance, or geocaching. Within this context, recent geographical and phenomenological studies on mobile media practices, in particular, reveal a trend toward a revaluation of place and placiality. While social sciences, media and cultural studies label this re-materialization of place “spatial turn,” a cultural, humanistic and media turn is acknowledged in geography. Currently, the two converging developments are still marked by differing conceptual formations: locative media and mediated localities. This paper as well as this issue are concerned with both sides—the spatial turn in media studies and the media turn in geographical studies—and provides a sketch of the subject area “geomedia” from a phenomenological perspective and the field of “media geography” from a dsciplinary perspective. As a theoretical framework for media geography in general and geomedia in particular, this article favors the actor-network theory for three reasons: a) The actornetwork theory tends to conceptualize places prior to the network of heterogeneous agents; b) it reveals itself to be a suitable heuristic for locative media as through the geotagging of objects instead of people, the actor-media theory permits a manifestation of what Bruno Latour means by the “Internet of Things” and, c) on the other hand, the actor-network theory puts us in a position whereby mediated localities can be described as if there is nothing more in the territory than what is in the map. Based on this argument, the conclusion can be drawn that media geography therefore also constitutes a new discipline for overcoming the very distinction between physical and human geography.