A place for locative media: A theoretical framework for assessing locative media use in urban environments

By 2050, three quarters of the world’s population will live in large urban conurbations. Within these environments, we see the rise of locative media – mobile technologies that capture and deliver location- and time-specific content and connections to their users. The key attribute of locative media that distinguishes them from other mobile media is location. Yet ideas of how locative media influence our relationship to the spaces we inhabit remain undertheorized. This gap arises because of an absence of interrogation into how and why people come to develop a connection with these spaces – how and why a space becomes a place to which its inhabitants ascribe meaning and in which social relations occur among them. This thesis proposes a theoretical framework for interrogating locative media in the context of everyday, embodied and mobile urban place-making, to better analyze the opportunities and challenges afforded through locative media.