Pokémon Go is the most popular location-based game worldwide. As a location-based game, Pokémon Go’s gameplay is connected to networked urban mobility. However, urban mobility differs significantly around the world. Large metropoles in South America and Africa, for example, experience ingrained social, cultural, and economic inequalities. With this in mind, we interviewed Pokémon Go players in two Global South cities, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Nairobi (Kenya), to understand how players navigate urban spaces not only based on gameplay but with broader concerns for safety. Our findings reveal that players negotiate their urban mobilities based on perceptions of risk and safety, choosing how to move around and avoiding areas known for violence and theft. These findings are relevant for understanding the social and political aspects of networked urban spaces as well as for investigating games as venues through which we can understand ordinary life, racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequalities.

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Networked infrastructures support the flows of information and communication. While traditional conceptions of networked infrastructures render them necessarily immobile and centralized, this article rethinks the concept of networked infrastructures to instead consider their mobility. In doing so, this article conceptualizes mobilized networked infrastructures (MNIs) and examines their implications in three sections: Forms of Action, Production of Networked Space, and Ways of Knowing. The Forms of Action section indicates that, over time, MNIs have allowed for new spaces and practices of communicative mobility. The Production of Networked Space section considers the speculative potential for MNIs to deterritorialize networked space, but argues that MNIs often reinforce already networked spaces and reterritorialize deterritorialized networked space. Finally, the Ways of Knowing section examines the mobility of networked infrastructures as a new way of knowing by allowing the tracking of infrastructural mobilities in addition to, and in concert with, the tracking of human and nonhuman actors.

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