Article:
In the Footsteps of Smartphone-Users: Traces of a Deferred Community in INGRESS and POKÉMON GO

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dc.creatorGanzert, Anne
dc.creatorGielnik, Theresa
dc.creatorHauser, Philip
dc.creatorIhls, Julia
dc.creatorOtto, Isabell
dc.date.accessioned2020-03-10T10:06:54Z
dc.date.available2020-03-10T10:06:54Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.description.abstractIn this article, the authors carry out conceptual and theoretical reflections on smartphone communities by closely investigating two apps: INGRESS (Niantic 2012) and POKÉMON GO (Niantic 2016). While the games’ narratives fabricate reasons for the players to move, it is the Smartphone – understood as an open object between technological and cultural processes – that visualizes and tracks players’ movements and that situates and reshapes the devices, the users and their surroundings. A central aspect is that the ‘augmented’ cities that become visible in the apps are based on the traces of others: other processes and technologies, as well as other players. These traces of practices and movements structure the users’ experience and shape spaces. Traces are necessarily subsequent and we therefore develop the concept of a deferred (smartphone) community and analyse its visibility within the apps. By close reading the two case studies, we examine potential “smartphone communities” in their temporal dimensions, as well as their demands and promises of participation. In order to gain a perspective that is neither adverse to new media nor celebratory of assumed participatory community phenomena, the article aims to interrogate the examples regarding their potential for individuation/dividuation and community building/dissolution. In doing so, the games’ conditions and the impositions placed on the players are central and include notions of consent and dissent. Drawing upon approaches from community philosophy and media theory, we concentrate on the visible aspects smartphone-interfaces. The traces left by the various processes that were at work become momentarily actualized on the display, where they manifest not as a fixed community, but as a sense of communality.en
dc.identifier.doi10.25969/mediarep/13514
dc.identifier.urihttp://digicults.org/files/2019/11/dcs-2017-0204.pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/14440
dc.languageeng
dc.publishertranscript
dc.publisher.placeBielefeld
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2364-2114
dc.relation.ispartofseriesDigital Culture & Society
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectSmartphone
dc.subjectcommunityen
dc.subjectvideo gameen
dc.subjectspaceen
dc.subjectlocative mediaen
dc.subjecttemporalityen
dc.subjectHandyde
dc.subjectNianticde
dc.subjectGemeinschaftde
dc.subjectVideospielde
dc.subjectRaumde
dc.subjectLokative Mediende
dc.subjectTemporalitätde
dc.subject.ddcddc:790
dc.subject.workINGRESS
dc.subject.workPOKÉMON GO
dc.titleIn the Footsteps of Smartphone-Users: Traces of a Deferred Community in INGRESS and POKÉMON GOen
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2021-05-29T02:32:01
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttp://digicults.org/files/2019/11/dcs-2017-0204.pdf
local.source.epage57
local.source.issue2
local.source.issueTitleMobile Digital Practices
local.source.spage41
local.source.volume3
local.subject.gndhttps://d-nb.info/gnd/1112681604
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13462819
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q63352
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q20966579

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3(2) 2017: Mobile Digital Practices