Mapping the anxiety of digitally mediated mobilities in the mundane

Abstract

This article focuses on the ‘small moments’ of digitally mediated mobilities in the mundane. Drawing on a qualitative GIS analysis of people’s walking, driving and ride-hailing in urban Guangzhou (a megacity in south China), this article maps the complex and dynamic anxieties from a social practice perspective. It argues that anxieties of daily mobilities are entangled with digital practices of reducing, removing or producing future uncertainties, as well as those of generating instant confusion of the digital/data during the management and organisation of familiar routines. The key findings of this study suggest that anxieties of digitally mediated mobilities are situated knowledges generated by the temporalities, spatialities and socialities of daily movements. These complex, contingent and dynamic anxieties are coped with improvisationally. These findings can bring new insights into mobilities studies by constructing an understanding of the co-constitution of embodied and emotional movements and mobile technologies in the digital mundane.

Keywords:

• Daily mobilities
• anxiety
• the digital
• qualitative GIS
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to Leszczynski (2020, 194), the digital mundane refers to the ‘ordinary and routine sites, objects, data productions, and networked practices of everyday life’ that includes ‘ordinary devices with network connectivity that participate in the internet of things (IoT), the intimate spatialities of the smart home, the banal landscapes of digital infrastructures and data, quotidian quantifications and datafications of the self, and digital iteration as a political scholarly praxis’. The mundane offers a direct entry point for understanding the enlivened digital production and consumption that affect and are affected by ordinary people’s lives and the consequences of these intensifying and accelerating affects.

2 Refers to the fear of disclosing personal information and the pervasive dataveillance of the intelligence services that intercept and analyse personal data (Crawford 2014).

3 This means that individuals desire to determine and direct the flow of personal data while simultaneously realising that any attempt to impose such control is in vain at the level of devices, services, and applications (Leszczynski 2015a).

4 Other types of sharing industries in China include sharing of apartments (e.g. Mayi.com); sharing of catering (home kitchen and sharing recipes); sharing of logistics (e.g. Joybuy Yuncang); sharing of finance (crowd-funding networks, such as Hongling Capital); sharing of knowledge (online Q & A platforms and education platforms, e.g. Zhihu); sharing of health care, including online medical consultation (e.g. Chunyu Doctor), and sharing of medical facilities.

5 http://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2017-04-18/doc-ifyeimzx6886194.shtml. accessed on 22 December 2020.

6 Chengyou does not care about the price of his travel because his company pays his travel expenses monthly.

7 According to Hughes (2020), skilful lost is in relation to personal experiences in strange places, engaging with the process of matching the versions of physical places, and the constructed version of place held in their mind (sourced from maps, GPS devices, instructions provided by others, or simply the one they have developed through their own navigational instincts or prior experiences).

8 An interface developed by the WeChat group. This interface can gather followers, send them notifications and redirect them to a website/e-commerce.

9 Dianping is a Chinese shopping platform for local consumer products and retail services, including entertainment, dining, delivery, travel and other services. This platform offers consumer reviews, reservation information and discounts for its customers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 42001152; and Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou under Grant 202102020997.