Geographies of “digital governmentality”: Platform-based governing through adaptive environments

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the geography of a new digital governmentality. In recent years, and extending Foucauldian analyses of different modes of governing, several studies argue that the digital transformation is fundamentally changing the way people are governed and govern themselves: a new, digital governmentality is emerging and replacing (neo-)liberal forms of governing. Two core characteristics are described as the basic nexus of this shift: on the one hand, a change in knowledge production through the capture and analysis of behavioural data; and on the other hand, a change in the governing of subjects by influencing subconscious behavioural patterns. We show that the perspective of a digital governmentality can sensitise geography to this new mode of digital governing. Furthermore, the digital governmentality debate enables geography to explore interconnections within the power/knowledge nexus between different aspects of the digital transformation that have so far been analysed in rather isolated ways. At the same time, geographic inquiries in turn offer impulses for the digital governmentality debate: Firstly, scholarly debate on a digital governmentality has rarely addressed the geographies in and through which this new governmentality operates. Addressing this research desideratum, we conceive two interconnected geographies of a digital governmentality and combine them into an analytical perspective: a new micro-geography of hybrid, sensing, and adaptive environments and a new macro-geography of digital platforms. Secondly, this perspective contributes to unearth the complex, often contradictory and contested relationships of a digital governmentality to other modes of governing. We use this perspective on geographies of digital governmentality to understand the development of digital outdoor advertising by Europe's largest out-of-home advertising company.