Rethinking communication geographies

Abstract

Chapter 1, "Rethinking Communication Geographies," presents the argument and theoretical cornerstones of the book. This entails three ways of rethinking communication geographies. First, the chapter presents an account of geomedia as the environmental regime of contemporary dwelling. This means that media technologies amalgamate with people's life environments and bodily existences. Geomedia is also a regime where connective, representational and logistical media affordances converge, and where the latter type become increasingly prominent. Second, the chapter addresses the struggles over logistics that geomedia gives rise to. Digital media platforms provide unprecedented logistical affordances for people to navigate and coordinate their everyday activities. At the same time, the platform economy implies that human practices are not just predicted but ultimately steered in order to generate predictable digital data streams. This raises important questions around human agency. Third, the chapter initiates a discussion on how geomedia affects the human condition, especially people's ways of making place and existing together in a geomediatized culture and society. The discussion is guided by Arendt's (1958/1998) exploration of the three variants of the "active life," the vita activa - labour, work and action - combined with phenomenological geography and critical cultural studies.