Digital Geography and Society最新文献

{"title":"Evaluating a women's digital inclusion and storytelling initiative through the lens of empowerment","authors":"Pamela Ellen Richardson,&nbsp;Sarah Wilson","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100092","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In terms of digital inclusion, a global gender gap has been widely documented with women more likely to face digital exclusions, particularly in rural areas and especially in the Global South. Digital inclusion initiatives (DIIs) aim to address these disparities by providing hard-to-reach groups with access to digital infrastructures and/or competencies. In this paper, we heed calls for contextualised DII research that centres the oft-neglected experiences of socially and digitally marginalised women. As such, we contribute a case study from a women's project in Zimbabwe and elaborate a feminist framework of empowerment as an approach to qualitative evaluation. The study involved online Digital Storytelling workshops co-facilitated by and for women, using WhatsApp as the main communication platform. Thirteen participants were interviewed on WhatsApp following the workshop programme. Beyond supporting the development of digital competencies, we found that remote storytelling fostered relationship-building and a sense of solidarity to develop between participants. The paper shares findings around the practicalities of using WhatsApp to mediate online digital storytelling initiatives, which has transferable practical applications in other hard-to-reach contexts. Furthermore, we argue that the feminist framework and approach elaborated in the paper could be deployed more widely, as a tool for both co-designing and evaluating DIIs with communities to enhance the empowerment gains of digital inclusion projects.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"7 ","pages":"Article 100092"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266637832400014X/pdfft?md5=acc2b18bb9a2e64b7d8f4d62e209fc1b&pid=1-s2.0-S266637832400014X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141328960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Digital and analogue spaces of care: How older adults are redefining care practices in the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Christine Gibb ,&nbsp;Gabriella Meltzer ,&nbsp;Nnenia Campbell ,&nbsp;Alice Fothergill","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100091","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100091","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>COVID-19 changed the way we care. Scholars have long argued that care often requires proximity, especially when it comes to care for, with, and by older adults. With lockdowns and the imposition of widespread public health guidelines aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, such as physically distancing and sheltering-in-place, in-person care practices became increasingly difficult. Yet, unlike disasters catalyzed by hurricanes or other natural hazards, physical and communications infrastructures remained largely intact during the pandemic. This situation opened the possibility for shifting care into digital spaces. In this paper, we study how older adults (aged 65 and up) in Canada and the USA navigated this abrupt turn towards digital spaces for care. Our findings are drawn from our larger mixed methods study investigating the everyday COVID-19 pandemic experiences of older adults, children, and teens, examining vulnerability, mobilities, and capacities. Not only are older adults frequently characterized as the recipients of care, but they are also typically (and erroneously) homogenized and stereotyped as vulnerable and tech-unsavvy. Exploring the ways in which older adults have provided, sought, received, avoided, and been denied care during the pandemic thus reveals the complex negotiations, contestations, and emancipatory possibilities of digital spaces of care. Our attention to the accessibility needs of diverse older adults serves as a vehicle for exploring issues of intersectionality in shaping digital care. We describe a range of digital care practices, ranging from telemedicine appointments and app-based communication to web-based volunteering and online social gatherings. We explore digital communication and connection between generations; the potential for such communication during the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented, in part due to the massive uptake of digital communication options such as online video conferencing programs. We discuss the mismatch between the possibilities made available through digital architectures and care practices, relations, needs, and desires of older adults. Drawing on feminist theorizations of care, we situate older adults as both givers and receivers of digital care and unpack the intertwining of their agency and vulnerability. Their innovations, spurred in part by diverse experiences with the ageing process, the pandemic, loneliness, joy, and frustrations with care in the digital sphere, suggest radical practices and spaces for inclusive care during and after the pandemic. What is radical about such care is that it is based on everyday, even mundane, elements that often go unremarked, rather than any flashy (monetized) innovations developed by technology companies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100091"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000138/pdfft?md5=73b5b5316d864ec059768620dd8ebfca&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000138-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141143684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Digital natures: New ontologies, new politics?","authors":"Andrés Luque-Ayala ,&nbsp;Ruth Machen ,&nbsp;Eric Nost","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100081","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100081","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Digital tools and practices are transforming societal relationships with non-human worlds—whether through smartphone apps that city dwellers use to navigate urban forests, robotic bees that pollinate crops, or webcams that livestream rare birds' nests. Recent academic and popular interest in the coming together of digital and natural worlds has generated both creative and critical reflections on what the digital means for the very concept of nature, troubling the latter's ontological stability. In this Introduction to the special issue <em>Digital Natures: Reworking Epistemologies, Ontologies and Politics</em> we claim that the digital, when considered beyond an epistemological register, is a productive and political force that is unsettling, rather than reinforcing, the boundaries between society and nature. We review the extensive body of work from across geography and the social sciences that is actively engaging with digital–nature intersections, and historicise current debates through reference to the figures of the cyborg, technonatures, biomimicry and digital organisms. Asking whether digitalized practices of sensing, abstraction and algorithmic recombination simply mirror a pre-existing and external Nature, or whether they advance a reconceptualization of nature, we set out to trace the progressive political potential of a digitally-entangled ontological redefinition of nature. We discuss how, within emerging digital natures, agencies are entangled in a reimagining of what both nature and society are about. Here, we argue, lies the transformative potential of digital natures—precisely in challenging and subverting the ontological place of an external Nature. The introduction finishes by simultaneously outlining a research agenda for digital natures and presenting the six papers that comprise the special issue.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100081"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000035/pdfft?md5=084f9ab71d2b244c72de15fa7c236ec0&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000035-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140087469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Context-based civic blockchain: Localising blockchain for local civic participation.","authors":"Cristina Viano","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100090","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100090","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Experiments in alternative forms of urban digitalisation include blockchain-based applications as enablers of civic action in local communities, inspired by different visions than blockchain-based speculative cryptocurrencies. This article investigates how blockchain technology can be oriented towards locally embedded applications. It explores the case of a blockchain-based wallet app that aims to support social collaborative economies and civic participation in urban communities by tokenising social and economic assets. Building on studies on the embeddedness of urban digital platforms with a local character, this article studies how the app under consideration is shaped by, and adapted to, the needs and resources of local socio-economic contexts. Two pilot experimentations on the app are considered, concerning systems for rewarding civic participation and urban sharing economies. The empirical analysis concerns the methodology for introducing the app into local socio-economic contexts, the way in which local actors interpret its properties, and the resulting iterative co-design of its functionalities. The article defines and discusses the extent to which the civic blockchain is rendered context-based by this methodology, and highlights similarities and differences with other urban digital platforms. The empirical evidence drawn from this research contributes to the debate on how community members, researchers and digital experts together can realise alternative forms of urban digitalization.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100090"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000126/pdfft?md5=d700db9fdc6de85c80c4f609bdcc1c5d&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000126-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141033717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“A delivery vehicle for change and democracy”: Exploring care and scale in digital engagement","authors":"Benai Pham","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100089","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100089","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Special Issue defines ‘housing disruptors’ as the emerging ideologies, practices, and logics capable of changing the housing system. In this paper, I argue digital engagement technologies were a housing disruptor for combining an <em>ethic of care</em> and <em>technological scale</em> in order to reimagine planning democracy and ultimately the delivery of equitable housing. First, I outline the care ethics of digital engagement and connect it to a lineage of planning theory that values deliberative participation and agonistic urban politics. I then interrogate the meaning of scale in digital engagement and how it contributes to urban democracy and justice issues. However, the structural limitations that practitioners faced in practice put into question how possible it was to apply a scale logic from the technological and business world, which sought to streamline and grow, to a planning system (that is complex) and solutions to the housing crisis (even more complex). My concluding remarks suggest that digital engagement was symbolic for the changing value principles in planning, as one that was committed to a fairer and more equitable planning system; but how successful it was (or has been) able to provide an alternative planning structure remains uncertain.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100089"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000114/pdfft?md5=d8bee0a2ecb09e0f08a66ef9a29a9b9d&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000114-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140778357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Discrimination in the time of digital real estate: Illustrating a rental schema in the Australian setting","authors":"Peta Wolifson,&nbsp;Sophia Maalsen,&nbsp;Dallas Rogers","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100088","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100088","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Digital real estate technologies (Proptech) have rapidly become ubiquitous in many nations—including Australia—their presence reshaping how tenants, landlords and agents navigate private renting. How Proptech are mediated by regulatory settings and responses shapes their presence, impacting on their potential for both subtle and overt forms of discrimination. In this paper we draw on our Australian-based research to illustrate the utility of a rental schema to develop understandings of digital reconfigurations and their discrimination effects in the private rental sector. Our research sought to identify and examine discrimination against renters across the entire experience of renting—particularly in relation to new and emerging forms of discrimination arising from, or exacerbated by, digital technologies. By focusing on the experiences of renters, the schema that we employed inverts Proptech approaches that create and target new assets for financial extraction through the rental sector, instead recognising the discriminatory potential of such approaches. We signal the utility of this renter-experience-centred approach to examine the rental sector through a discrimination lens, and the real and potential role for regulation including, but not limited to, a focus on digital technologies. Incorporating research, alliance-building and advocacy into our schema bolsters its renter-centredness and reiterates the necessity of these efforts at housing justice for urgent regulatory reform. We point to our own nascent efforts in collaboration with Australian tenant advocacy groups—inspired by others—to use digital technologies to subvert embedded power imbalances that drive discrimination in Australia's private rental sector.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100088"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000102/pdfft?md5=a49f0bdb27056265cb7fc139ef9e3eef&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000102-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140781315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The German platform economy: Strict regulations but unfair standards?","authors":"Fabian Ferrari ,&nbsp;Alessio Bertolini ,&nbsp;Maren Borkert ,&nbsp;Mark Graham","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100084","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100084","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In the German public debate, platform work and crowdwork have become the epitome of the dark side of the digital transformation of the working world. Although Germany is marked by a high density of labour regulations, those do not necessarily translate into/create fair conditions for platform workers in the country. At first glance, the historical legacy of strong social partnership between employers' and workers' organisations and the restrictiveness of German labour law mean Germany present powerful regulatory tools to thwart precarity and strengthen workers' rights in the platform economy. However, the spread of non-standard employment and sub-contracting, in combination with increased migration from within and beyond the EU, has given rise to a rather different picture. Assisted by public demands for far-reaching deregulations to secure Germany's international competitiveness as production site, several digital labour platforms have found an environment conducive to growth in Germany. Platform work in Germany is often lauded for its flexibility and low entry barriers, as it provides an easy opportunity to earn an income and can help labour market integration for those who face barriers to standard employment. Nevertheless, important issues are present. The paper aims to shed light on the working conditions of platform workers in Germany. The analysis is founded upon the five core principles of Fairwork. Drawing from documentary analysis, 65 semi-structured interviews with platform workers and 8 interviews with platform managers, the paper finds that the country's relatively stringent labour regulations do not always translate into fair working conditions for platform workers. Although, compared to other countries, many platforms workers in Germany are legally classified as employees, sub-contracting practices, the use of unskilled migrant labour and other platforms' practices undermine many employment rights in practice.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100084"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000060/pdfft?md5=e7afcdfb162257c0214346fafbd9b7b2&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000060-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140282149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The power of visual representations and the growing aestheticization of food. An interdisciplinary analysis of Airbnb visual content in Siena","authors":"Addis Maria Cristina,&nbsp;Capineri Cristina","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100083","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The paper aims at exploring the role played by visual content in the processes of place touristification and commodification that are initiated and accelerated by online platforms. The analysis addresses the photographs through which Airbnb hosts illustrate and promote their accommodations, focusing on food images as the most fertile terrain for the inquiry, by virtue of the density of its aesthetic, social, geographical, and cultural meanings, constantly evoked by the photos. The analysis is based on a corpus of 250 listings located in the Municipality of Siena (Tuscany, Italy) present on Airbnb between November 2020 and February 2022, and 3960 photographs of the interiors uploaded by hosts. To this end, the authors develop an interdisciplinary method of investigation that synergistically integrates the geographical approach with interpretative models applied in the fields of semiotics and visual studies. The city of Siena is itself an excellent case study. Thanks to its small size, it was possible to map the entire set of accommodations present in the territory during the indicated period, which makes the corpus homogeneous and exhaustive; as a major tourist attraction in Tuscany and nationwide, the link between food, tourism and local identity is particularly strong and therefore worthy of study. Based on the outcomes, the conclusions show the effects and dynamics of a process of image normalization that differs profoundly from the promise of authentic and unique tourist experiences summed up in the platform's slogan “living like a local”.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100083"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000059/pdfft?md5=a0d82b361d5dc51c9acd0df303dc097a&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000059-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140162622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Considering ethics of care in online learning spaces","authors":"Denise Goerisch,&nbsp;Ty Krueger,&nbsp;Madison Edwards","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100087","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>At the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, many American universities and colleges abruptly shifted online to reduce the spread of infection. The shift, while framed as a way to accommodate and care for the broader campus community, created new inequalities and exacerbated existing inequities among students, faculty, and staff. Faculty were introduced to forms of technology and digital media used to surveil students, such as anti-plagiarism software, invasive online exam proctoring, and recorded Zoom class sessions. Universities framed the use of technology students during a time of crisis as an act of care, but also engendered spaces of surveillance, distrust, and harm in the digital landscape. Rooted in neoliberal ideologies, care within university digital spaces is framed as an objective or function wherein the university <em>cares about</em> or <em>cares for</em> its students, faculty, and staff, rather than pursuing more equitable, democratic, and socially just models of care ethics. Based on qualitative research conducted on university responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, we argue that universities frame surveillance within digital spaces as an act of care, specifically through the antiquated model <em>in loco parentis</em>. We provide recommendations for universities to move towards more equitable care and discuss the ethics of care concerning surveillance in digital spaces.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100087"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000096/pdfft?md5=5f7698245fa0de84335571487b8e88c1&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000096-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140138394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Platform labour on the margins and beyond the digital realm: Mapping the landscape of “platform-generated labour” in the digitally mediated short-term rental market.","authors":"Dimitris Pettas","doi":"10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100082","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper explores the landscape of labour in the platform economy and, more specifically, the ways local economic activities and actors are exposed to pressures of platformisation, building on the case of the Airbnb platform and the digitally-mediated short-term rental (STR) market in Athens. Conceptualising STR networks as infrastructural assemblages and through a qualitative study building on 27 semi-structured interviews with relevant actors, I focus on: tracing the wide range of workers who undertake essential tasks, the employment statuses, compensations and modes of engagement of workers, restrictions and gender-dimensions, as well as the content and attributes of STR-related work. My main argument is built around the notion of ‘platform worker’ and the need to expand it beyond workers that are directly related to the platforms, in order to include the on-site labour force upon which the creation and everyday operation of broader platform ecosystems and related infrastructure are depended.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100377,"journal":{"name":"Digital Geography and Society","volume":"6 ","pages":"Article 100082"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378324000047/pdfft?md5=1ba311b24950e24d81374fd4ab2b3e49&pid=1-s2.0-S2666378324000047-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140113597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}