Mobile Phone Geographies

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the mobile phone has not only entered our everyday lives at tremendous speed but also diverse fields of academia. Critically examining the mobile phone’s appeal as a research object from a geographic perspective, this article engages with the recent fashioning of mobile phones by geographers. In doing so, it pays special attention to the particularities of focusing on a technological object, dealing with the issue of technological determinism from different theoretical perspectives and the ways in which they impact on research practice. Identifying and discussing emerging themes and fields of interest, it is the central aim of this article to provide an overview of ‘mobile phone geographies’ and, by developing an idea of the specific character and challenges of this emerging field, to conclude with reflections on promising links for future research.

Looking through Hägerstrand’s dual vistas: towards a unifying framework for time geography

“…Although we have made important progress in recent years in harvesting spatial and temporal data from multiple online sources, the quality and credibility of those data for scholarly research still warrant further investigation. We need to explore new ways in which the fusion of GIS with social media can be deployed to promote the human-as-sensor paradigm (Goodchild, 2007) in spatial data generation and continue to develop procedures that are capable of handling both quantitative and qualitative data (Backstrom et al, 2010;Yardi and boyd, 2010) and mobile phone data (Pfaff, 2010) at both individual and aggregate levels (Ratti et al, 2006;Sevtsuk and Ratti, 2010). The availability of abundant spatial-temporal data provides time-geographic researchers unprecedented opportunities to study people's mobilities across multiple spatial and temporal scales.…”

Countering isolation with the use of technology: how asylum-seeking detainees on islands in the Indian Ocean use social media to transcend their confinement

“…While technology has allowed detained individuals to engage with the social spaces of migrant advocacy and create virtual spaces of support, they still face the punitive effects of indefinite detention in remote areas. As Pfaff (2010) and Bjarnason (2010) also conclude, technology use signals changes in how people experience time and space, but these changes are nuanced: spaces may fold, but distance still separates. Through their use of technology, asylum seekers experience the exquisite irony of engaging with narratives about globalization that proclaim 'nowhere can be an island'-while simultaneously being imprisoned on islands in the Indian Ocean (Bjarnason, 2010).…”

“…Technology thus becomes an important vantage point into the study of power relations, allowing more complex understandings of distance, nearness, virtual, real, mobility, and stillness to come to the fore (Pfaff, 2010). Gauging the complexities of power relations through the lens of technology becomes particularly interesting in an island environment (Bjarnason 2010).…”

“…Technologies also have the potential to create new spaces. Indeed, the study of technology is powerful precisely, Pfaff (2010) concludes, because technology becomes a relational object, engaging both technological and social ways of experiencing the world.…”

“…Geographers particularly focus on the ability of emerging telecommunications technologies to alter experiences of time and space (e.g. Hinchliffe, 1996;Pfaff, 2010). Scholarship critiquing technology for contributing to rigid and technocratic forms of development has begun to give way to more optimistic conclusions about technology's 4 relationship to power and geography: as Wilson (2007) writes, technology promotes plural knowledge, learning, and respect for differences.…”