The Discursive Construction of Place in the Digital Age

Description

This collection calls for greater attention to the need for a clearer understanding of the role of discourse in the process of placemaking in the digital age and the increasing hybridisation of physical and virtual worlds. The volume outlines a new conceptualisation of place in the time of smartphones, whose technological and social affordances evoke placemaking as a collaborative endeavour which allows users to create and maintain a sense of community around place as shareable or collective experience. Taken together, the chapters argue for a greater emphasis on the ways in which users employ discourse to manage this physical-virtual interface in digital interactions and in turn, produce “remixed” cultural practices that draw on diverse digital semiotic resources and reflect their everyday experiences of place and location. The book explores a wide range of topics and contexts which embody these dynamics, including livestreaming platforms, mourning in the digital age, e-service encounters, and Internet forums. While the overlay of physical and virtual information on location-based media is not a new phenomenon, this volume argues that, in the face of its increasing pervasiveness, we can better understand its unfolding and future directions for research by accounting for the significance of place in today’s interactions. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in discourse analysis, digital communication, pragmatics, and media studies. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents Introduction Part I Macro approaches 1 The discursive construction of place through the online-offline interface: from physical locations to wikispaces 2 The best thing on Twitch today was a bike messenger: experiencing metropolis, mobility and place through live-streaming 3 Digital first-order place, velocity and chronotope in globalized communication 4 Space, place and TikTok: propaganda, documentation and accountability Part II Micro approaches 5 The lived experience of place in a Twitter affinity space around the death of sports celebrity Maradona 6 The offline/online nexus and public spaces: morality, civility, and aggression in the attribution and ratification of the Karen social identity 7 The physical-digital interface: what does “ici” (“here”) mean in a written online discussion? 8 Spatial deixis within political discourse on Twitter 9 The role of location information sharing in e-service encounters on Mercado Libre Index