Platform affects of geolocation

Abstract

Abstract This paper engages the intensifying integration of digital location (‘geolocation’) and platforms via affect. I mobilize affect as both a theoretical framework and an analytic to engage with geolocation as an instrumentality of intensities that organizes affects for platforms, which I term ‘platform affects’. I theorize platform affects as individual and collective orientations of attunement, predisposition, and/or incentivization towards using, contributing to, remaining within, and/or returning to platforms. Drawing on select empirical examples identified as part of a qualitative study, I identify that geolocation organizes five ‘platform affects’ for digital platform ecosystems: (i) affective space-times of hyperlocality and real-timeness; (ii) experiential affects of smoothness; (iii) affects of connectedness; (iv) affects of trust; and (v) affective value. Theorizing geolocation affectively adds explanatory power to the “dynamics driving the integration” of geolocation and digital systems (Alvaren Leon, 2016, p. 1). Simultaneously, engaging platforms via affects (of geolocation) advances an understanding of the ways in which platforms have come to secure and sustain prominence within dominant contemporary socialities defined by configurations of bodies, technologies, and other materialities that are themselves captured within and expressed through theories of affect (Clough, 2007).