Reflexive Zeit- und Raumkonstruktionen und die Rolle des Global Buzz auf Messeveranstaltungen

Abstract

Reflexive time-space constructions and the role of global buzz at trade fairs. International trade fairs bring together agents from all over the world and create temporary spaces for presentation and interaction. Within specific institutional settings, participants not only acquire knowledge through face-to-face communication with other agents, they also obtain information by observing and systematically monitoring other participants. This paper analyzes trade fairs from the perspective of time-geography as reflexive time-space constructions which enable economic interaction within well-defined, spatially and temporally bounded places. Temporary face-to-face contact and the physical co-presence of global communities at these events establish a particular information and communication ecology, referred to as global buzz. This paper aims to analyze the constituting components of global buzz and to dismantle the complexity of this phenomenon in a multi-dimensional way. Participants at international trade fairs benefit from intensified decentralized knowledge flows in the form of learning by interacting and learning by observation. As such, these events establish central nodes in the global political economy through which knowledge is created and exchanged at a distance.