Welcome to GEO3146 Digital Geographies 2023/24.
No other technological innovation in human history has affected the practice of geography in such a profound way as the computer. It has drastically transformed both geography as an academic discipline and the geography of the world.
Sui and Morrill (2004) ” Computers and Geography” in Sui & Morrill Eds. Geography & Technology, Springer Dordrecht: p. 84
AIMS
This module has two principal aims:
- to explore how we relate to one another and experience the world with and through ‘the digital’
- To look into the role of ‘the digital’ in the ways we understand ‘geography’.
The module will introduce you to the ways in which geographers have addressed the role of the digital in relation to understandings of space and place, political economic activities, identity and difference, and community, society and world.
Embedded in the module are two elements of my research: the forms of spatial imagination produced by and through innovation practices; and: the role of digital media in contemporary spatial experience and how this might be studied by geographers.
Further, the module will draw upon theory and empirical work from science and technology studies concerning the production of knowledge with and about digital technologies.
Through regular discussion and independent learning you will relate your studies of technology to your everyday experiences of everyday life. The module will also introduce transferable skills through the video coursework.
Whilst this is a ‘new’ module it has foundations in my previous option module GEO3139 Geographies of Technology.
You can find the full Key Information Set for the module on the university website.
“GROUND RULES”
This sounds a bit stern(!?) but its not meant to be. To make things manageable I need a set way of doing things:
- Please OUTSIDE OF LECTURES/SEMINARS: ASK ALL QUESTIONS VIA COMMENTS ON BLOGPOSTS HERE (unless it is something embarrassing/personal or related to an ILP – in which case email me).
- Please PARTICIPATE. Please engage with the tasks and please take part in the activities.
WHAT TO EXPECT
The module is an opportunity to think through many of things we take for granted in our everyday lives. I encourage you to explore – ideas, case studies – to broaden, challenge and deepen your understanding. It is fairly theoretical, but hopefully in a helpful way.
I want this to be interesting! I hope the examples and ideas I introduce you to are interesting. They are intended to be introductory – there is an emphasis here on you then finding out more through your independent study.
On a weekly basis you can expect:
- An introductory blogpost per lecture. This will provide you with some context and highlight the key ideas/examples we will explore that week.
- In-person, classroom-based, sessions that both introduce ideas and provide you with a way to pose questions.
- One or Two asynchronous tasks: these may be reading things, watching videos and/or writing your own reflections.
ASSESSMENT
This module is 100% coursework – it is assessed by TWO pieces of coursework:
- A 2000-word essay (50%)
- A 5-7 minute video (50%)
The video coursework can be completed in a fairly simplistic way. It need not be complex. I am marking you on how good you are at communicating an idea, not how well you can use the video editing tech (ironic, I know).
Please see the module ELE page for the module workbook which contains the assessment briefs.
DEADLINES
The deadlines for these courseworks will be listed on the ELE page. Please continue to check the ELE page for further information.
TASK
We will be getting started fairly swiftly. This week is about getting orientated. There are three tasks:
- Attend the lectures [Time on Task: 50 minutes per lecture].
- Lecture slides are linked at the bottom of this section.
- Familiarise yourself with the assessment briefs [Time on Task: approx. 30 minutes].
- Read two things (BOTH of them please) [Time on Task 80 minutes (30 each)]:
- “Introducing Digital Geographies” – please read the short introduction to the book Digital Geographies edited by Ash, Leszczynski and Kitchin. Click the link above to go to the library catalogue entry and then use the link on that page to access the book.
- “Changing Digital Geographies” – the first 11 pages of the introduction (don’t read the ‘methodology’). Click the link above to go to the library catalogue entry and then use the link on that page to access the book via VLE Books. NB. VLE books uses pop-up windows to launch the ‘reader’ window so you may need to change your settings to allow that.
Slides
Recap Recording
You can access ReCap recordings on the module ELE page. It will require your university log-in to access the recording.
4 replies on “1: Introducing Digital Geographies”
Hi Sam,
In the McLean (2019) reading there’s a section on digital monsters that is lost on me:
“The most well-known damaging aspects of the digital might be the troll—that digital creature which emerges at particular spaces and times, to fight disparate and sometimes organised campaigns, in groups such as 4chan or Anonymous (Coleman 2014). These trickster characters, similar to hackers (Nikitina 2012), are slippery aspects of digital spaces.” (McLean 2019 p.7)
It seems to me that the authors are quick to characterise meme culture as this degenerate monster, positioned as the bane of more legitimate movements. To me this comes off as an overly general and outdated 2000s view of trolls being on the underbelly of the internet in some dark corner somewhere.
It seems surprisingly aggressive considering what use online communities and Anonymous have had as activists, revealing corruption and representing censored voices over the past decade.
Is this how meme-communities are generally perceived in the literature? Also, do you think this would be a valid focus for the assessments?
Thanks
You could perhaps turn your question into a task for further reading. For example, you could pose the question – is this ‘aggressive’ as you suggest? That is an interesting point of view to explore. I suggest looking into wider discussions of online activism in digital geographies literature. Online forums that have elicited strong reactions in wider media such as 4chan have been discussed in academic literature in a number of ways, again you could look into this for yourself, or follow McLean’s references, for example. If you are unsure about this after doing some wider reading then please do bring your questions to the seminars and/or this website. These are certainly valid topics of consideration as part of the assessments.
Hi Sam,
Ive just been going over the McLean (2019) reading and I am struggling to understand the ‘more-than-real’ Concept.
Specifically this quote on page 3 “The reality of the model is a question that needs to be dealt with…The alternative is a false one because simulation is a process that produces the real, or, more precisely, more real (a more-than-real) on the basis of the real. (Massumi 1987, 93)”
Would you be able to explain the concept in an easier-to-understand way? And how fundamental is this concept to that of digital geographies?
Thanks
Hi Rosie, apologies for this delayed response. I cover some of this in the lecture ‘Digital Spaces’, but a reasonably straightforward way of understanding Jess McLean’s ‘more-than-real’ and theorisations of ‘the virtual’ is that they are ways of turning the assumption that ‘online’ and ‘offline’, ‘the digital’ and ‘the real’ are binaries or dichotomies into a question. What if we don’t arbitrarily split these things apart and assert their separateness? So, by quoting Brian Massumi’s work Jess is bringing together her own feminist epistemological approach with a (poat-structuralist) ontological approach to argue the same thing: there is no easy distinction between what is digital and what is (apparently) not. The ‘more-than-‘ is therefore important here because it is an insistence on bringing things together rather than splitting them apart. You asking this question on a website as part of a module that we (mostly) do in a physical classroom is ‘more-than-real’ in this sense. It is not only a physically embodied ‘real’ experience or only a digitally mediated experience – it is a mixture.