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Documentary With Ephemeral Media: Curation Practices in Online Social Spaces Ingrid Erickson Bulletin of Science Technology & Society 2010 30: 387 DOI: 10.1177/0270467610380007

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Downloaded from bst.sagepub.com by guest on February 20, 2012 Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 30(6) 387–397 Documentary With © 2010 SAGE Publications Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Ephemeral Media: Curation DOI: 10.1177/0270467610380007 Practices in Online Social Spaces http://bsts.sagepub.com

Ingrid Erickson1

Abstract New hardware such as mobile handheld devices and digital cameras; new online social venues such as social networking, microblogging, and online photo sharing sites; and new infrastructures such as the global positioning system are beginning to establish new practices—what the author refers to as “sociolocative”—that combine data about a physical location, such as a geotag, with a virtual social act. This research investigates the phenomenon of documentary broadcasting, whereby individuals curate lasting descriptions and commentaries about a location for a public audience, often using the photo sharing site, Flickr. Unlike many photographs shared online, the subject of a documentary post is always a place and not the activities nor identity of the broadcaster himself or herself. When presented together as curated narratives, posted images transform Flickr into a virtual public “gallery space” that captures, presents, and preserves aspects of a place that may last longer than the physical location itself.

Keywords locative technologies, location, global positioning system, GPS, public, documentary, Web 2.0, social media

Introduction social venue such as Facebook or Flickr—as a new vehicle for documentation. By definition, broadcasting is the act of The practice of documenting the world around us is highly sharing information beyond yourself to a perceived or actual personal. We are drawn to particular aspects of our environ- audience, both local and distributed. As has been well document that we find worthy of calling out for attention or con- mented (Benkler, 2006; Jenkins, 2006), the Internet has sideration. We might want to preserve a moment in time as a shifted broadcasting and related media production capabili- personal memento, or to produce an artifact that commem- ties away from the small cadre of elite media organizations orates a place in time (Ames & Naaman, 2007; Chalfen, that once controlled them into the hands of everyday citizens 1987). Yet we are also equally compelled by the possibility with access to networked devices and editing tools. With the of reaching a public audience for our work. By making a popularization of locative technologies such as global posi- record of something that can be shared, the documentarian tioning system (GPS)-enabled mobile devices and Google becomes an information conduit that connects that which Maps (Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu, & Sey, 2007; Ito, might have existed unseen, unnoticed, or unrecorded to an Okabe, & Matsuda, 2005; Ling, 2004), social media can audience capable of reacting, drawing meaning, and some- extend beyond being a vehicle for general communication times acting on this shared record. In the United States, we and connection into a spatial database reflective of our nascent readily hold up the reporters Bernstein and Woodward as hybrid reality—at once anchored in the physical world by documentarians of the public record—though we sometimes way of precise longitudinal and latitudinal spatial coordi- forget that the photographer Ansel Adams imbued us with nates, but also simultaneously virtual in its instantiation the same, crisp level of truth telling. Documentaries, whether within the online world (Rudström, Höök, & Svensson, 2005; people, visual, or textual, have power in their reception by an Sheller, 2004). audience. This article will detail the phenomenon of documentary 1Social Science Research Council, Brooklyn, NY, USA when it is integrated with two key developments on the sociotechnical (Trist & Bamforth, 1951) front: social media Corresponding Author: Ingrid Erickson, Social Science Research Council, Digital Media and locative technologies. I refer here to the phenomenon and Learning Initiative, 1 Pierrepont Plaza, 15th Floor, Brooklyn, of “sociolocative broadcasting”—the act of sharing geo- NY 11201, USA referenced digital media with others by way of an online Email: [email protected]

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Sociolocative broadcasting practices are particularly San Diego in 2007 (Sutton, Palen, & Shklovski, 2008), the complex for the way they interweave the broadcaster with Mumbai attacks in 2008 (Stelter & Cohen, 2008), and the place, time, and audience; they situate computer-mediated election protests in Iran (Boguta, 2009; CBS/AP, 2009; communication within both social and spatial contexts. Broad- Cohen, 2009; Gapper, 2009; Greenberg, 2009; Quirk, 2009; casts, while individually authored, are always witnessed and Rhoads, 2009; “Twitter 1,” 2009; Web Ecology Project, often commented on by audience members who are both 2009) showcase exactly this usage model of sociolocative known and unknown: They are simultaneously personal as broadcasting, especially viable through mobile, microblog- well as social communicative acts (Donath & boyd, 2004). ging applications such as Twitter. In this article, however, Moreover, sociolocative broadcasts are situated simultane- I focus on a third motivation for sociolocative broadcasting, ously within virtual and physical-material contexts. Whereas namely, the desire to create a lasting documentary of a place. the content of sociolocative broadcasts includes some form What is noteworthy about Web 2.0 documentarians is their of geographical representation, the practice of sociolocative use of geographical and semantic tags to intelligently archive broadcasting is also geographical—it both shapes and is these images within the online information environment of shaped by perceptions of the type of social territory in which the Internet. it is occurring (Brown & Laurier, 2005). This tripartite I uncovered these three motivations by qualitatively inter- emphasis of communication, community, and context viewing2 50 subjects and analyzing the artifact data (i.e., requires that we assess sociolocative broadcasting relative to individual broadcast posts) they produced online. I made a broad set of ideas—communicative, sociological, and every effort to connect with a diverse set of individuals for geographical. this study, though I did not purposively randomize on all I will anchor a discussion of these broad ideas in a close possible demographic elements. The final subject pool was examination of how individuals are using the online photo 34% female and 66% male; the group was with a few excep- sharing site, Flickr, to broadcast locative messages to a pri- tions primarily American and averaged 37 years old in age— marily public community. This conversation can be situated somewhat older than characteristic media portrayals of social within recent discourse in critical and cultural geography in media users. which we can begin to understand how mediated locative In my overall study, I compared the conditions of micro- documentaries might be reshaping our notions of place and blogging3 and online photo sharing as a way of interrogat- space (Bell & Dourish, 2007; Chayko, 2007; Dourish, 2006; ing two types of perceived sociolocative behavior: one that Mitchell, 2005). It can also be aligned with conversations emphasized the location of the author (microblogging) and about mediated communication: Sociolocative broadcasting the other that emphasized the location of the artifact being can be seen as a new genre, one in which individuals move shared (online photo sharing). Here, however I will focus away from the notion of themselves as abstracted, placeless primarily on the comparison of locative and nonlocative authors in a dimensionless, online space to authors wishing practices of sharing photographs in a social online venue. to share and comment about their specific realities (Arminen, I chose the website Flickr4 for both conditions: In the loca- 2006; Barkhuus et al., 2008; Fortunati, 2005; Gotved, 2006; tive condition (GeoFlickr), users attached geotags5 to their Humphreys, 2005). By leveraging automated tools such as shared photographs (see Figure 1 as an example), whereas in location-stamping,1 or even intentionally adding formal place the nonlocative condition (Flickr) they did not. At the time of names or spatial attributes to a communication, an author is my data collection (mid-late 2007) the affixation of geotags making a new kind of statement within his or her community to uploaded digital images in Flickr was a fairly intentional or to the world at large. In conducting the larger study that act, meaning that people had to take pains to associate geo- informs this article, I discovered more about what type of graphic metadata with the respective images (e.g., by way of message this sociolocative documentary might be. external GPS devices or by dragging images in Flickr onto a map interface). The introduction of smartphones such as the Nokia N95 and the iPhone 3G, both with GPS capabilities, Research Study and the increased popularity of GPS-enabled digital cam- In a recent dissertation I discovered a trio of motivations for eras, have increased the ease with which geotagged photo- sociolocative broadcasting. The first motivation, as has been graphs can be created today. discussed deeply in popular and critical articles on social In addition to interviews, I also collected the artifacts pro- media is the desire to link place with identity (Baym, 2007; duced by each subject (i.e., posted photos) over the 24-week boyd & Heer, 2006; DiMicco & Millen, 2007; Goodings, period in which I collected my data. One artifact was equiva- Locke, & Brown, 2007; van Dijck, 2008). The second moti- lent to one Flickr web page, which is organized around the vation is the desire to be a citizen broadcaster—to be the digital image but includes additional information such as eyes and ears for a community that is distributed elsewhere date of posting on Flickr, added semantic tags, description, in geographical space (Lenhart & Fox, 2009; Szerszynski & title, make of camera used in taking the picture, name of sets or Urry, 2006). Unfortunate incidents such as the wildfires in pool to which the photo has been added, and any comments

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Figure 1. A geotagged photograph of a street scene viewed via Figure 2. The list of seven pools to which a Flickr user has Flickr’s online map simultaneously assigned his photograph Note. The pink dot indicates the exact location that the author wants Note. The list appears on the side of the photo webpage on the associated with the image. Flickr site. left by viewers. Overall the 10 Flickr subjects produced behavior through artifact and interview analysis, and then talk 4,935 unique artifacts during the 24-week period, with the about how it was exemplified in two variants—the first I call least prolific producer contributing only 56 posts and the “documentary broadcasting” and the second I call “scouting.” most prolific contributing 1,686 posts. The GeoFlickr subjects produced 12,340 artifacts over the 24-week period, of which 5,458 (44.2%) were geotagged. The largest number of Documentary Artifacts photographs produced in this time period by a subject was Documentary broadcasts can be identified by their inclusion 5,636 and the least was 22. To expedite my analysis I created of geotags or formal place names, and, for those broadcasts a sample for each subject comprising 50% of their total out- made in Flickr, an assignment to one or more external pools. put; where that number was greater than 100, I capped the A pool is a collection of photographs that revolve around a sample size at 100 artifacts. theme—as broadly construed as “black and white photo- In the next section, I will detail the ways that I organized graphs” or as specific as “Ron and Sally’s Wedding, October 23, and characterized these artifacts into different types and— 2002.” Figure 2 provides an example of pool assignment; along with insights gleaned from analysis of the interview here, Subject BB has assigned one of his photographs to transcripts—determined that a documentarian practice was seven distinct pools. Assignment of photographs to multiple present in the overall sociolocative activity. I illustrate this pools in Flickr is an indicator that the broadcaster seeks to contention showing sample artifacts and also quoting from the have his photographs seen by as wide an audience as possi- interviews. While I am in no doubt that my findings regarding ble; pool assignments are, in effect, a form of publicity. As documentary practices are robust, it is worth mentioning that organizational elements, pool assignments also signify that a my intention with this study was not to be representative of photographer’s oeuvre is not simply a random set of images, all activity within Flickr or all intentions behind the use of but a categorized collection put together purposively for pub- geotags on photographic images. Instead, following on the lic display. In this way, the broadcaster acts simultaneously understandings of scholars such as Bijker (1995), Orlikowski as the curator for his or her own work. and Gash (1994), and others who posit that technologies Annotating with geotags and cataloging via pool assign- and technological practices go through a period of open- ments ascribes a lasting effect to the locative information ness and fluidity at their outset, this study sought to canvass that is part of the documentary broadcast. Some photogra- the breadth of associations that locative media possessed at phers indicated in interviews that their shots were meant to an early phase in their sociotechnical construction. The fol- preserve features of a place or location that was in decaying lowing description of documentarian practices is part of that state or subject to demolition; in turn, they referred to them- process. selves as “eyes” and their broadcasts as “observations” or “shared perspectives.” As in the case of citizen broadcasting, the subject of a documentary post is a place, such as a city Documentarian Practices street or a rural landscape, and not the activities or identity of As mentioned, my analysis revealed a practice on the part of the broadcaster himself or herself. certain broadcasters to make and often explicitly curate docu- Using the combination of the above-average use of loca- mentary broadcasts primarily for a public audience. I speak tive references and pool assignments within the artifact first about how I identified this practice within my subjects’ data as delimiting criteria, I identified four documentary

Downloaded from bst.sagepub.com by guest on February 20, 2012 390 Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 30(6) broadcasters among the 25 Flickr broadcasters in the study: Subjects BB, LL, OO, and XX. Subjects LL, OO, and XX are all from the GeoFlickr condition, a not unexpected finding given the comprehensive emphasis of this style of broadcast. Unexpectedly, Subject BB is one of the Flickr (nonlocative) broadcasters; in his interview he even claimed distain for the likes of geotagging. However, his online photo sharing, as it is with the other three subjects, is geared toward presenting a locale replete with complex layers of meaning (i.e., high use of locative references) to a public audience (i.e., high number of pool assignments), and, as such, con- forms to the practices identified with a documentary stance— public-oriented and place-related. I sketch some of the differences among each of these four individuals’ practices, but show how their communication motivations converge even if the details of their technological uses do not. Subjects BB and OO both use informal location refer- Figure 3. Posted photograph from Subject OO that highlights a close-up street scene from somewhere in Baltimore, Maryland ences to create their documentary sociolocative broadcasts, Note. The photograph has been assigned to a public pool titled which means that proper place names are used as metadata “Baltimore,” has been semantically tagged with the word “Baltimore,” but within the post. In Figure 3, for example, Subject OO eschews has not been formally geotagged with formal spatial coordinates. the use of a formal geotag but nevertheless creates a locative post by affiliating his image with a set titled “Baltimore Null,” a pool titled “Baltimore,” and assigning the photo a semantic tag titled “Baltimore.” His behavior here exactly mimics the sociolocative broadcasting style of Subject BB, a Flickr (nonlocative) subject. Subjects LL and XX, on the other hand, both from within the GeoFlickr subject group, also have high pool assignments, but instead of informal referencing of location, they primarily use formal geotags to convey the locative nature of their shared photographs. Interestingly, Subject XX places nearly all her locative emphasis on the use of geotags— informal location references are only evident in 9.5% of her posts. However, Subject LL, although higher in his use of formal location references than informal, still has semantic locative references on about a quarter of his shared photographs. Figure 4 provides an example of the use of formal location referencing (i.e., geotagging) by Subject XX, though note the large number of informal references as well in the title field, description, set and pool names, and semantic tags.

Informal Documentaries In addition to artifactual indications of documentary pat- terns, Subjects BB, LL, OO, and XX spoke of their motivation for documentary broadcasting in their interviews. For Subject BB, an avid photographer/web designer, the drive to document New York City was so passionate that it sometimes affected when he felt he could travel, Figure 4. Sample photo from Subject XX that showcases a view of a landscape in Point Reyes, California Flickr has affected how or when I leave New York Note. The image is augmented with a list of comments from viewers, has been assigned to both sets (personal categorization) and pools for vacations. . . . I don’t like to leave New York now. (public categorization), and has been tagged both semantically and I feel like I’ll be missing out. geographically.

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His love for the city stems from his practice of walking its time of our interview, he had been taking the train back and streets. He continues, forth between Baltimore and New York for a series of job interviews. This forced mobility provided him an excellent I’ve always gone on long treks around New York. . . . opportunity to document what he saw in various new loca- I’m very peripatetic. I’ll just walk around all day. I’ll tions. He describes this style of photography, centered on a walk for six hours straight easy. . . . I probably walk single street: the length of Manhattan in a day. It’s 12 miles. . . . I love exploring; I like finding new things. . . . It’s I’ve been getting really involved with like certain trained my eye too. places that I go back and forth between. . . . I come back to a place like Calvert County in Southern Mary- He is clear that his eye is trained on finding the treasures of land where I am right now that’s like fairly rural, fairly the city, and not on presenting himself. His subject is the place suburban, and an hour, hour and a half south of any and he is the conduit in bringing its eccentricities to a public city . . . or a place like Baltimore where a lot of these audience. Occasionally his meanderings take him to events in more urban abstract photos I’ve taken are from . . . progress, and he distinguishes these types of photographs there’s this one alley in Baltimore . . . just exploring from the documentaries he otherwise produces. He says, this one mid-block street . . . almost every time I find something new. And I’ve been tagging those with the In general, I like to be very anonymous, and the photo- name of the streets. I haven’t gone through and added graphs are about the city . . . about New York. And them to the map yet but some of them are already . . . that’s why I just keep going to different neighborhoods. it’s just really interesting to me to watch this line on Or I go to neighborhoods I feel that are under covered, the map get densified with all these dots, all these dif- or documented, that’s the word. . . . Sometimes I feel ferent things that ordinarily you wouldn’t put together I’m just documenting it and it may not be newswor- are really just happening within a few feet of each thy. And other times I’m definitely at an event because other as you walk down this street. I know it’ll be newsworthy. . . . And then there’s the walkabouts. I call them walkabouts, and that’s where I’ll Subject OO is not only keen to pass along what he sees to just walk for six hours and I’ll run into something. his Flickr audience, he himself is a secondary audience, one that becomes fascinated by the metarecord his wanderings Subject OO also spoke about his motivation for docu make on a map. Yet the desire for subsequent mapping menting locations, particularly his home town of Baltimore. appears to be ancillary to his desire for public association of He was particularly aware of how many of his photographs his photographs with their place of origin. Even the abstract represented his architectural and designer viewpoint, or his image of a brick wall depicted in Figure 3 is still ascribed to expert’s eye: the Baltimore pool; this abstract image is not an immediately recognizable image of the city, but does make up part of its Having a background in design gives you the ability to sense of place, according to Subject OO, though perhaps not kind of see an abstract viewpoint where others might one that the everyday viewer would instantly recognize. As not. Because you’re walking around and thinking a documentary broadcaster, Subject OO presents a set of about things in analytical terms and you’re trying to— his observations for a public audience that might otherwise like I constantly catch myself taking the kinds of never be seen—not only are his photographs taken in unsung photos that reference the conventions of architectural corners of cities and towns, but they also represent the drawing. Like straight-on elevations especially . . . viewpoint of a very sophisticated eye. images where the people who architecturally really walked into the frame. And symmetries and relationships become apparent when they’re using those kinds Formal Documentaries of conventions I think that aren’t obvious and other Subjects LL and XX use formal geotags in their documentary ways of seeing, ways of like moving through the world broadcasts and, as their interviews revealed, they regard geo- and looking at the built environment especially. . . . graphical precision to be an elemental aspect of their public I made one whole group of photos . . . that were sort of presentation. It is not surprising that Subject LL is a librarian everyday architecture but you could see the kinds of cataloger and Subject XX is a geographer—both of these pro- formal relationships coming through that. fessions deal strongly with the association between an object and its metadata. For these two subjects, the purpose of these Subject OO is also quite interested in showcasing interesting precise documents is to provide a record of something in aspects of places through which he frequently travels. At the place, not necessarily conveying a sense of place.

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Subject LL’s documentary subject is the surveillance This is a point raised where very specific things are infrastructure in Washington, D.C., and as such, he considers happening. That’s where I do my research from. That’s his documentary broadcasts to be a political act—a form of really specific to me: this is this building; it’s not just a broadcasting truth to power. In his interview, he told me building. . . . It has all these extra meanings to me, so about his motivations in outing hidden cameras and the like having the location for some of those is actually very in the Flickr photos he shares online: important to me to have that association.

I usually get in my car and drive to work and drive Clearly it is important for Subject XX to create a research home at the end of the day. I don’t do a whole lot of archive that is accurately tagged and precisely located. walking around with my camera. Although I do often But she also wants others to know about the history that is stop, park the car, get out with my camera and take embedded in places. She explained to me a bit more about some pictures, get back in my car and get on my way her work in Point Reyes and her efforts to publicize the . . . the cameras that are owned by “we-don’t-know- working history that this place had before it was taken over who” are everywhere and they’re becoming normal- by the Park Service: ized. And they all have the city logo on them . . . but so many of them are just not marked and they’re every- That’s why I think I study landscapes. It’s exactly that where. They’re hidden. sort of layeredness. In my case it’s the layeredness of the natural and the cultural. I have written a lot about For Subject LL, making these hidden cameras visible to the wilderness areas and how I don’t like how the ten- greater public is an act of responsible citizenship, so it is dency is to make them very ahistorical. . . . A few pub- quite important that the information he passes along be lished articles I have about the wilderness area at Point accurate and durable. To promote widespread access, he has Reyes [show that] . . . this place was a dairy farming created a specific pool for his surveillance documentaries on landscape for 150 years. . . . And they just pretend it the Flickr site and liberally uses semantic tags to improve never happened and it just drives me nuts. Come on. the searchability of his photos by others. He comments Let those layers be there. . . . Another cultural geog- about the role these forms of metadata play in his broadcast rapher, Pierce Lewis, he described landscapes as practices: unwitting autobiographies, and it’s just such a perfect phrase. But I think in some ways the Flickr thing has I think it’s all about the metadata. I think that a really become those, also. We are telling our stories through crappy photograph that’s got lots and lots of tags will these images, and through the places that we go, and do a whole lot more good than a beautiful photo with everything else in the same way, and I like those no tags. . . . I consider [pools] another useful way of stories. . . . I want the depth. I want it to be specific. organizing things. So if people are interested in photo- I want it to be—to not just be anywhere. graphs of gas meters, you know, I want to be right there in with them. And I’m a cataloger. I came out of a cata- It is clear from Subject XX’s comments that she believes loging environment so it satisfied that itch. . . . putting in the power of Flickr as a platform for showcasing lots and lots of tags in, helps kind of spread the word. cultural geographic narratives. Indeed, in all four of these documentarians’ broadcasts, there is some form of narrative Subject XX, the geographer, is in many ways the exem- present. For Subject BB, the narrative is the quotidian plar documentarian for her ability to articulate the connec- life of New York city—a photographic equivalent to Frank tion between a photographic image, its associated metadata, O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. For Subject OO, the narrative is the and a recipient audience. Geographical precision, for her, city and its forms. He showcases architecture and ways of is about archiving cultural history that has happened in a seeing its abstractions. For Subject LL, the narrative is the particular location. She speaks directly to Dourish’s (2006) unmasking of corporate and government powers in urban theoretical insight that places can be distinguished from infrastructure, and for Subject XX, the narrative is the spaces by the cumulative layers of meaning they possess for preservation of historical layers in certain geographical places. people: These narratives use the sociolocative broadcast genre to curate enduring public presentations that use Flickr as a I think it fits into that compulsion to just get everything digital gallery space. . . . all the data documented, associated with this place. Because I’m also someone who’s really interested in place, and landscape, and the meanings that places Scouting have. To be able to locate something that specifically, In addition to posting and tagging photographs in Flickr, to be like: this isn’t just any old farming landscape. I discovered that a certain style of microblogging provided

Downloaded from bst.sagepub.com by guest on February 20, 2012 Erickson 393 my subjects with another forum for documentary broadcasting. Although, given microblogging’s textual nature, these documentaries tended to be far more spare than their photographic counterparts. I label this documentary variant “scouting” because it appears that broadcasters use their distributed positions and networked mobile connections to make “shout Figure 5. External Flickr feed in Subject R Jaiku post (March 15, outs” regarding lasting features of a place that they wish to 2008) share on a wide, public scale. Indeed, several commercial location-based applications, such as Socialight and Whrrl,6 encourage (and commercialize) this type of sociolocative communication. Microblog documentaries, as with all sociolocative broadcasts, must include reference to a specific place; their directedness toward a public audience, however, is an assumption that must be inferred for lack of an obvious indicator such as a pool assignment. Figure 6. Flickr photo series within Subject O Jaiku post (March 27, 2008) Among the Twitter and Jaiku groups I studied, there were no standout documentarians, but, instead, nearly all the Twit- ter subjects created one or more documentary broadcasts proffered opinion may be augmented with a link to more over the course of the observed period. By way of contrast, information. While often lightweight in effect, these minidocu I provide a few examples of textual documentaries to show- mentaries do not have as much of a throwaway feel about case their spare nature, as compared with the photographic them as the citizen microbroadcasts with their chatter about broadcasts previously detailed: the weather or upcoming events. Instead, these posts seem to be the digital equivalent to neighborly advice or even a type @seanodmvp it’s about a 25-30 minute drive DTW to of recommender system, in which broadcasts paint small, Ann Arbor. (Subject A, 7:39 p.m., March 20, 2008) lasting pictures of certain locales for the benefit of anyone resenting that the caribou coffee is closing around and everyone listening. me 20 minutes before the doors shut. smelly floor Jaiku subjects also broadcast scouting documentaries, mops and all. Bleh. (Subject A, 10:43 p.m., April 1, often leveraging Jaiku’s ability to import image-based 2008) feeds like Flickr photographs into their microblog posts. In sea like creaking floorboards above the brickyard, essence, Jaiku combines the immediacy of the microblog saxophone and wandering bass fill the courtyard out- post and the stability of the Flickr’s photographic gallery side our door. 306 main is up at night. (Subject B, format to fashion a haiku-like narrative for the receiving 6:58 p.m., March 7, 2008) audience. Subjects R and O provide a few examples of this The patrons of Plum Market seem to be unruly chil- combination Flickr-Jaiku minidocumentary in Figures 5 and 6. dren & their self-entitlement-loving parents plus a In the case of Figure 5, the microblog post shows an image smattering of ironic hipsters. Shudder. (Subject C, of a named location and nothing more, whereas, in Figure 6, 6:43 p.m., March 15, 2008) the post details the first in a series of photographs that can be Great Lakes Chocolate & Coffee has the best accessed by hyperlinking. take-away coffee lids of ever. (Subject C, 1:33 p.m., Certainly scouting broadcasts are nowhere near as March 28, 2008) sophisticated as those documentary posts made by Flickr Café Habana is a fun place for morning meetings— broadcasters—the metadata possibilities for organization upbeat music, good coffee and basically undiscovered. so fundamental to reaching a broad public audience are (Subject D, 8:12 a.m., March 24, 2008) missing in Twitter and Jaiku for starters—yet they do suc- ceed in a small way in making a lasting document of a spe- The interesting Michigan flare to these posts is an cific location. unintended outcome of the fact that many of my Twitter In sum, this review of documentary sociolocative broad- subjects were from Michigan; to my knowledge, there is casting suggests a quite distinct motivation for the inclusion nothing unusual about this place that makes it the subject of of geographical information than other forms of practice in avid documentation. Nevertheless, it is evident from this which authors include locative information in a social, online sample that microblog broadcasters use the medium to context. The preceding examples show that documentarians make minidocumentaries about particular locations, often via Flickr, Twitter, and Jaiku strive to reach a broad, public businesses, that they hope will affect the opinions of a broad audience in an effort to present a picture description of a base of recipients. Language in these posts is often slightly place that is stable and layered with meaning. This form more descriptive, proper names are spelled out in full, and a of placemaking, built primarily on the shared photo form,

Downloaded from bst.sagepub.com by guest on February 20, 2012 394 Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 30(6) suggests not only a nascent genre of communication—one Subject PP’s mention of “a spot on earth or an area on earth” that seeks to capture and, where possible, curate lasting loca- associated with past and present information about physical tive narratives for a public audience—but also a new way of resources, available services, history of inhabitation, and seeing the world—as a virtual repository of information and aspects of weather and/or landscape (depending on how one documentation that lies atop everyday physical reality. I dis- classifies a blue sky) appears to tie spatial coordinates (spots) cuss some of the implications of such a “hybrid database” in or place names (areas) with a whole host of possible forms the next section. of information that could be associated with them. This is precisely what a database is—a record of associations keyed to a unique identifier. Documentary Broadcasts A hybrid database, as an aggregating technology, brings and the Hybrid Database together multiple perspectives—both an individual’s own as The implications of sociolocative documentary broadcasting well as perspectives on that individual—into a whole, which extends beyond the identification of a new form of mediated provides a metaperspective on a particular place. Subject practice. Rather, this practice itself may be helping to reshape YY provides a good example of what this might look like in our perceptions of physical reality. practice: As I have shown, the online photo repository, Flickr, acts today as the primary access and archival method for I think there are a lot of interesting things happening in geo-coded documentary broadcasts. Yet considered more San Francisco and it’s good to document them. I also abstractly as a rapidly expanding database of geo-reference think it’s really interesting when there are a bunch of content, Flickr also creates a possibility for in situ engagement photographers at an event to see the different [perspec- with this content via GPS-enabled mobile devices such as tives]. . . . I was able to . . . find other people who had the iPhone or the BlackBerry. As the possibility for access- [uploaded photos] . . . so I was able to find photos of ing documentary information in situ rises, so too will our me taking photos. (Subject YY) expectations that we can access the place-related layers produced by others. Unlike Dourish’s (2006) notion that a Such a form of synchronous, convergent place-related place is meaningful because it is ascribed with cognitive information has never existed previously. Documentary layers of memory, this conception of place articulates sociolocative broadcasters are certainly driven by complex meaning from the aggregated contributions of a distrib- motivations when presenting their place-related posts uted community of people that can be accessed because of before a public audience, but many do contend that they are their common technological reference—the database’s contributing expert views or restoring lost knowledge about unique place identifier, the geotag. Conceived as such, we a place for public benefit. For the moment, Flickr serves can begin to envision a time when people see physical as the database that holds these objective and subjective space as containing access points, or portholes, to an ancil- narratives in place; however, the rapid integration of lary database of information that they can access or con- technology platforms with one another (i.e., Flickr posts in tribute to via a mobile device. In short, the physical world Jaiku, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.) suggests that the future serves as the interface for accessing and contributing to trend will be increasingly away from proprietary databases the digital database. toward one where artifacts can be accessed across federated In my analysis, individuals did not speculate much regard- databases via unique geographical identifiers. ing the hybrid spatial potentialities of their practices, but The recent appearance of new projects such as City of one informant did express a precursor to the notion of a Memory7 confirms my supposition that there is a trajectory hybrid database when she shared her thoughts regarding the toward sociolocative hybrid databases emerging on the idea of place: scene. The City of Memory project, an online database of locative narratives run by the design studio Local Projects in [Place is] like a set of understandings and knowledge cooperation with the community arts organization City Lore, that you have connected with a geographical area. And allows individuals to upload stories (Figure 7) tagged to a those understandings can be anything from: these particular location (Figure 8), in this case New York City as are the physical resources available here, this is where can be seen in Figure 9. The content of the project is both the ATM is, this is where the bathroom is to . . . my personal narratives and curated cultural histories, and stories best friend once lived here to the sky is always so blue can be augmented with images or audio, if desired. Together when it’s blue here. And, you know, any of those the collected narratives create a pointillistic map, which acts things that you have, the minute they become associ- as the access interface for the hybrid space database online. ated with a spot on earth or an area on earth, that’s a Documentary sociolocative broadcasting fortifies the place. . . . Its past and its present, your past there and notion that certain corners of physical space can and soon your present there. (Subject PP) will be overlaid with a digital layer of information. For the

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into the field. Space as a database is a conception not too far- off, and one that will portend a new set of spatial logics, legibilities, and literacies. We should continue to direct our attention to these new forms of place and space so that we can ground our nascent understandings of mediated hybridi- ties with empirical evidence of real-world practices.

Conclusion Using the tools of social media and locative technologies, we have seen that a new form of practice called sociolocative broadcasting has recently appeared on the scene. Within this larger genre of mediated communication, there are a subset of practitioners who create documentary broadcasts through Figure 7. Story view in City of Memory Project which they seek to convey a durable impression of a specific location for a public audience. These documentarians achieve this goal at the level of content, but also by using semantic and organizational metadata to enable greater searchability and leverage publicity on sites such as Flickr. As broadcasters, documentarians surface unknown facts about or images of a place and then curate them for presentation in online forums that act like galleries or museums by providing a persistent venue for interaction. In their emphasis on durable and accurate information, documentary broadcasts are helping to construct a new con- ceptualization of place and space that is tied by way of a database of unique spatial coordinates and place names. Organized around the unique identifier of the geotag and accessible via GPS-enabled mobile devices, this database will increasingly be accessed in situ, which may lead to an increased perception of a digital layer of information over- Figure 8. Map view in City of Memory Project laying physical structures—a new hybrid reality of digital and physical. At a public level, the sociolocative genre of documentary broadcasting establishes a template for photo sharing, for metadata documentation, and for online organization and presentation within Flickr. It also appears to influ- ence the behavior of the broadcaster prior to any broadcasting directing him to focus on certain elements in his surroundings. Many documentary broadcasters told me that they wanted to share what they saw in the world and this emergent form of Web 2.0 communication provides a template for social interaction between a broadcaster and his or her audience. Simultaneously, this genre serves as a frame for seeing one’s surroundings for the eventual purpose of social interaction. From the evidence presented herein, I infer a trend in mediated communication in the future that will continue to emphasize not only the connection between identity and Figure 9. Homepage of City of Memory Project—A map of the place (e.g., synchronous self-in-place broadcasting), but five boroughs of New York City will also create new digital platforms for documenting and archiving history and stories about specific places and for subjects in my study, Flickr currently stands in as the data- bringing people together and informing them about what is base. However, we occupy a liminal moment in time when salient in their community or in the world at large. I look data are increasingly moving away from the desktop and out forward to continuing this exploration with future research.

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