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Infrastructures support and shape our social world, but they do so in often invisible ways. In few cases is that truer than with various documents that serve infrastructural functions. This article takes one type of those documents--technical standards--and uses analysis of one specific standard to develop theory related to the infrastructural function of writing. The author specifically analyzes one of the major infrastructures of the Internet of Things--the 126-page Tag Data Standard (TDS)--to show how rethinking writing as infrastructure can be valuable for multiple conversations occurring with writing studies, including research on material rhetoric, research that expands the scope of what should be studied as writing, and research in writing studies that links with emerging fields. The author concludes by developing a model for future research on the infrastructural functions of writing.

In the early 2010s, location-based social networks (LBSNs) received significant attention from both the public and venture capital. The "LBSN moment" was an important period of early mobile geomedia history, and this article argues that the reverberations of that moment still shape the contemporary social geomedia landscape. This article examines the LBSN moment through a media genealogy approach that views the period as a moment of juncture for the development of social location-sharing, which ended up being dominated by large platforms like Facebook and Uber. The article also draws from research on technological development to push back against narratives of inevitability and argue that specific dynamics of the LBSN moment, particularly the double-edged sword of hype, closed-off avenues for the media form. The article ultimately uses an interventionist genealogical approach to explore different paths that could have been—and still could be—taken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Places are filled with stories, with histories that shape how people understand the nature of a place. Places are unique sets of trajectories – each with a story – coming into contact. However, just as much as places are defined by their histories, they are also shaped by the histories that are forgotten, or far too often, actively suppressed through dominant narratives. After all, dominant media of spatial, public memory – for example, plaques and public monuments – often reproduce dominant narratives of a place, narratives created by the powerful. This project examines how digital placemaking can be deployed through locative technologies to push back on dominant spatial narratives and make places more polyvocal in consequential ways. In particular, through a project at Clemson University, we examine how locative storytelling applications can help students intervene in traditional narratives of place to engage with social justice and alternative histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue required authors to complete final articles by mid-June 2020, so they were writing them while the pandemic continued to spread. The articles range from engagement with rural communities to social media verification systems to the World Health Organization's attempts to communicate the pandemic across multiple languages in Africa. These topics have become even more important as the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented public engagement with data. [Extracted from the article]

Virtual Reality (VR) has traditionally required external sensors placed around a designated play space. In contrast, more recent wired and wireless systems, such as the Oculus Rift S (released in March 2019) and the Oculus Quest (released in May 2019) use cameras located on the outside of these devices to monitor their physical position. Users can now mark out a physical space that is then digitally tracked within their display. Once a play space has been established, users are alerted if they come close to breaching this boundary by the visual inclusion of a grid. Should this threshold be breached, the headset display shifts to an image of the surrounding concrete environment. We contend that physical space is increasingly being incorporated into the digital space of VR in a manner that meaningfully differs from older systems. We build our argument in the following way. First, the article explores how theories surrounding VR have implicated only a limited relationship with physical space. Second, the article introduces the concept of coextensive space as a way of understanding the developing relationship between the physical, digital and concrete reality enacted by current VR systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructures support and shape our social world, but they do so in often invisible ways. In few cases is that truer than with various documents that serve infrastructural functions. This article takes one type of those documents—technical standards—and uses analysis of one specific standard to develop theory related to the infrastructural function of writing. The author specifically analyzes one of the major infrastructures of the Internet of Things—the 126-page Tag Data Standard (TDS)—to show how rethinking writing as infrastructure can be valuable for multiple conversations occurring with writing studies, including research on material rhetoric, research that expands the scope of what should be studied as writing, and research in writing studies that links with emerging fields. The author concludes by developing a model for future research on the infrastructural functions of writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The goal of this article is to make the case that technical standards can be valuable educational tools for technical communication teachers. The article argues for the pedagogical value of standards through an examination of one particular standard: the Tag Data Standard, published by GS1. The analysis focuses on areas in which the document could be improved by technical communication practitioners and students. Method: The data for this article come from the 126-page Tag Data Standard. The standard was inductively analyzed using grounded theory and involved a second coder. The research question that guided this analysis was, "How could this comprehensive standard be improved by trained technical communicators?" The goal is to show how technical standards could be used to provide students with real-world texts to analyze and edit. Results: The data show the TDS could likely be improved if technical communication practitioners were more involved in the writing process to focus on issues of consistency, audience, and design. The article uses those results to show why standards could be valuable educational tools for teachers. Conclusion: Standards are a crucial form of technical communication. They are an example of how language shapes the material world. The analysis in this article shows that these crucial documents can be improved by skilled technical communicators and can serve multiple pedagogical goals, including showing students how documents shape materiality and providing students with comprehensive, real-world texts to work with and improve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on locative media ethics and presents several responses to questions regarding locative media ethics. Topics include the relationship between communication and media, the communication design intersections of disability and accessibility, and the journalistic concerns associated with locative media ethics.

Research in the field of mobile communication studies (MCS) has generally moved away from focusing on how mobile phones distract users from their physical environment to considering how the experience of space and place can be enhanced by locative smartphone applications. This article argues that trajectory may be complicated by the emergence of a new type of mobile technology: mobile virtual reality (MVR). While an increasing number of handsets are specifically developed with MVR in mind, there is little to no research that situates this phenomenon within the continuum of MCS. The intention of this paper is accordingly twofold. First, the article conceptualizes MVR as a connective tissue between the two sequential tropes of MCS: physical distraction and spatial enhancement. Second, the article introduces the concept of 'dislocated space' as a way of understanding the embodied space MVR might configure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foursquare was a mobile social networking application that enabled people to share location with friends in the form of “check-ins." The visualization of surrounding known social connections as well as unknown others has the potential to impact how people coordinate social encounters and forge new social ties. While many studies have explored mobile phones and sociability, there is a lack of empirical research examining location-based social network's (LSBNs) from a sociability perspective. Drawing on a dataset of original qualitative research with a range of Foursquare users, the paper examines the application in the context of social coordination and sociability in three ways. First, the paper explores if Foursquare is used to organize certain social encounters, and if so, why. Second, the paper examines the visualization of surrounding social connections and whether this leads to “serendipitous encounters." Lastly, the paper examines whether the use of Foursquare can produce new social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location-based services are mobile applications that use a device’s location to provide relevant results. Spatial search applications are a popular subset of location-based services that enable people to search through their surrounding space to find nearby locations. This article examines spatial search applications through a framework that combines critical geography research with research on the power search engines exert over information visibility. The main argument of the article is that popular spatial search applications, such as Yelp, may subtly reproduce existing forms of spatial segregation by rendering certain location invisible through the mobile mapping interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Big data is one of the most hyped buzzwords in both academia and industry. This article makes an early contribution to research on big data by situating data theoretically as a historical object and arguing that much of the discourse about the supposed transparency and objectivity of big data ignores the crucial roles of interpretation and communication. To set forth that analysis, this article engages with recent discussion of big data and “smart” cities to show the communicative practices operating behind the scenes of large data projects and relate those practices to the profession of technical communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how location-based mobile media technologies are affecting the ways individuals experience the relationship between memory and place. We argue that location-based mobile applications that allow people to check in to places or record their routes represent new practices of place-based digital memory. Many individuals are using mobile media to mobilize place and memory together to create new forms of digital network memory from which they may begin to remember their pasts and to write their histories—a kind of rhetorical and poetic memory making. To help illuminate these practices, we analyze applications such as Foursquare and My Tracks and draw on research in mobilities studies, new media studies, and memory studies to introduce and advance concepts such as personal digital archiving and digital network memory. These practices of place-based digital memory have consequences for understanding the interrelationships between mobility, place, memory, and mobile media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Walkman and iPod have often been viewed as individualizing technologies. People use these forms of mobile media to impart a sound track of their own choosing over their experience of physical space. However, newer mobile projects have examined the links that tie mobile media and sound to experiences of movement. These projects focus on the collaborative construction of shared soundscapes through mobile media, in a sense responding to the individualizing tendencies of dominant auditory mobile media. This article draws from literature in sound studies, media studies, and locative media art to examine these relatively new forms of what we call social soundscaping. Through our analysis, we show the potential for new mobile sound practices that allow for the more participatory production of public soundscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides background on social network analysis, an innovative research paradigm that focuses on the importance of social networks. The article begins by giving background on the development of social network analysis and different methods used by social network analysis researchers. The article then examines how these methods can be used in the field of technical communication by focusing on how technical communicators form social networks and connect diverse audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2021, Facebook, Inc. changed its name to "Meta Platforms, Inc." A key part of this rebranding involved Facebook's long-term focus on virtual reality (VR) and the future of the supposed Metaverse. Significantly, as of November 2021, users have only been able to access the VR space of Meta if they sign in through their social networking account. While Facebook has suggested it will change this in the future, the specifics of this future have yet to be explained. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to explore the implications of identity within VR if identity within this space is tethered to a corresponding social networking account. Here we suggest the virtual self currently being forged in Meta forms a connective tissue between (1) early accounts of online communication enabling the body to be left behind and (2) more embodied approaches to identity in the context of digitality. We then argue that the virtual self is not a singular entity per se but forms a contiguous connection between the lived experience of VR and data gathered through social media about the identity associated with said experience. Finally, we argue conceptualizations of identity in VR (and Meta's role in identity) will only become more pressing as Meta attempts to build its supposed "Metaverse" in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location-based social networks ( LBSNs) are mobile applications that allow people to share their physical location with friends through their mobile device. The sharing of location is a relatively new form of computer-mediated communication, and there is a lack of existing research examining the coordination practices of people using social location sharing services. This article reports on qualitative interviews with frequent users of the LBSN Foursquare to show both how LBSNs complicate views of the relative 'placelessness' of traditional mobile communication and how the design of Foursquare complicates its utility as a mobile coordination tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early theories of the internet imagined that individuals would begin living most of their lives online, decreasing the importance of physical mobility and urban spaces. With the development of internet-enabled mobile phones, these early predictions have been proven false. The internet has not decreased the importance of physical mobility; instead, the digital information of the internet has begun to merge with physical space, leading to new types of hybrid spaces. These hybrid spaces are becoming increasingly common, and they may change the way physical space is negotiated and understood. At this early juncture, however, it is crucial to critically examine the development of hybrid spaces and how they may lead to issues of exclusion and exacerbate issues of access. This essay takes a critical approach to the development of hybrid spaces, arguing that what is often lost in discourses about these new understandings of space are questions of who gets to experience this convergence of the digital and the physical. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes 4 months of popular press articles from major publications about location-aware mobile phones. Our results identify 2 main areas: the control these devices offer over public spaces and the lack of control users have over their location information. This lack of control is often framed as a lack of privacy. We argue that the ability to control and personalize public spaces is not new because previous types of portable media already allowed users to manage interactions with public spaces. However, issues of privacy and control over public spaces are more pronounced with location-aware technologies. Our conclusions suggest that popular press discourses often overlook more complex social issues related to privacy in public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conceptualizes the new spatial logic created by the social use of location aware mobile technologies, analyzing how mobile communities are formed by the mapping of social networks in urban spaces. It explores two main areas with the goal of understanding how locative mobile social networks (LMSNs) challenge the traditional logic of networks. First, it conceptualizes LMSNs by comparing them to (1) traditional transportation and communication networks, and (2) mobile social networks (MSNs). Second, the paper discusses potential social implications of LMSNs, such as privacy, surveillance, and social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yik Yak was a location-based social application that allowed users to anonymously create, read, and respond to posts made within a few mile radius. This paper reports on six months of ethnographic work and interviews performed with 18 Yik Yak users. We argue that one of Yik Yak's primary functions was to communicate about place and to find new ways to connect abstractly with the local social situation. The data detailed in this article contributes to the growing literature on the spatial and social impacts of locative media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A debate is currently raging regarding the value of anonymity online. On one side of the debate is Facebook, the world's largest social network site. Facebook demands that people use their real names and is one of the leading forces behind the push towards a "real name" Internet. On the other side of the debate are scholars such as danah boyd and Bernie Hogan and sites such as 4chan and Reddit that view anonymity and pseudonymity as important to how people construct identity online. While much has been written about the benefits of anonymity and pseudonymity, there is a lack of published research examining specific practices enabled by pseudonyms. This article provides a detailed account of the behaviors enabled through pseudonymous identity construction through a case study of the subreddit r/gonewild. The main contribution of the article is to provide a specific account of the costs of a totalizing embrace of the "real name" Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading throughout much of the world, conspiracies arose that blamed the virus on the deployment of fifth-generation cellular networks (5G) infrastructure. These conspiracies had significant consequences, including protests against 5G and the destruction of 5G infrastructure. This article uses a media genealogy approach to place the 5G/COVID-19 conspiracies within the long and recurring cycle of conspiracies focused on mobile infrastructure. Placed within that broader history, this article argues that the 5G/COVID-19 conspiracies should have been unsurprising, and these types of infrastructural conspiracies should be a more significant part of mobile media and communication (MMC) research because infrastructures are an often invisible, yet crucial, part of the mobile practices studied within MMC research. The article concludes by theorizing about why mobile infrastructures are such a frequent target for conspiracy theories and argues that researchers should begin planning now for combatting the conspiracies that will almost inevitably arise when the next generation of mobile infrastructure gets linked to fears about public health., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2022.)