Locative Mobile Social Networks: Mapping Communication and Location in Urban Spaces

Abstract

This study conceptualizes the new spatial logic created by the social use of location aware mobile technologies, analyzing how mobile communities are formed by the mapping of social networks in urban spaces. It explores two main areas with the goal of understanding how locative mobile social networks (LMSNs) challenge the traditional logic of networks. First, it conceptualizes LMSNs by comparing them to (1) traditional transportation and communication networks, and (2) mobile social networks (MSNs). Second, the paper discusses potential social implications of LMSNs, such as privacy, surveillance, and social exclusion.

Key Words:

• Location‐aware interfaces
• mobile technologies
• networks
• space
• urban spaces
• Internet
• cell phones
• location
• location‐based services
• Loopt

Notes

1. The art movement that utilized locative technologies was called locative media, and since the early 2000s the term ‘locative media’ has been widely used by artists as a way to describe the use of location aware technologies (Galloway & Ward, 2006; Hemment, 2004; Russel, 1999). In this paper, we are using the term locative media in its strict sense (referring to locative media arts), and applying the term LBS to broadly specify the employment of location‐awareness in order to deliver / retrieve location‐based information to users within the domain of commercial applications (instead of artistic or research projects). LMSNs, in this case, are a particular instantiation of LBS, denoting applications that allow users to visualize other users in real time on a map on their cell phone screens. We believe this distinction is important because the social analysis of exclusion, privacy and surveillance we develop later on in this paper acquires increased significance when these applications move out of the experimental domain of art and research and start being widely used by the public.

2. We are not claiming that location aware applications have suddenly left the experimental domain of art and research and are now available to the general public only because of the development of specific hardware – that would be too simplistic. As with every new technology, there are many of social, economic, cultural and technological issues that contribute to the development and adoption of new technologies (Kellerman, 2006). However, it is undeniable that the availability of new platforms that allowed users to both access and build these applications significantly contributed to their popularization.

3. Hybrid spaces are mobile social spaces created by the constant movement of users who carry portable devices continuously connected to the Internet and to other users (de Souza e Silva, 2006). http://www.aec.at/en/archives/prix_archive/prix_projekt.asp?iProjectID=10954