Commentary: Geographies of digital lives: Trajectories in the production of knowledge with user-generated content

摘要

Whether it is "volunteered" or not, user-generated content is the fastest-growing source of spatially referenced data as people around the world use various portals to comment on everyday life, share photos and sounds, and use location-aware devices to inform and influence everyday life. Planners and geographers are well-situated to employ such data in their efforts to broaden public participation in decision-making; understand people's perspectives of neighborhoods, monuments, natural areas, and infrastructure; and more deeply theorize new urban social relations emerging with the digital revolution. The three articles reviewed here engage with different on-line portals (Twitter, Flickr, and web-based collective sound maps), but encounter some similar methodological challenges for which they each develop novel solutions, thus indicating some important developments in the production of knowledge. At a more conceptual level, the articles each demonstrate the progress being made in theorizing new geographies of digital lives. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.