Why Place Matters in Online Communication

A recent article in the journal Environmental Communication (Vol. 7, No. 1, p. 113-130) explores the role of place in online environmental messages. The authors, Paul C. Adams of the University of Texas and Astrid Gynnild of the University of Bergen (Norway) argue that place is "so central to being human" that trying to change environmental attitudes and behavior will rarely succeed unless the "power of place" is taken into account.

Adams and Gynnild are approaching place, in this paper, as a leverage point for online pro-environmental social marketing efforts. That is to say, communication efforts online that attempt to change attitudes and behaviors to be increasingly sustainable. This kind of post-consumerist work is becoming more common as people and groups all over the globe begin to realize that consumerism on such a massive scale is not only unsustainable, it is actively creating an environmental nightmare for future generations.

Place matters to online communication, suggest Adams and Gynnild (p. 116), for four general reasons:

P1) "Place is a dimension of the audience: media users vary from place to place in their level of familiarity with, and their responses to, environmental issues, to the geographical location of the audience is essential to understanding the process of interpretation."

P2) "Place is a dimension of the text: a video of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, a newspaper article describing lingering contamination at an industrial site, or a still photograph of a burning oil rig can all be considered place images in the media. Generic places (e.g., the developing world) or specific places (e.g., Madagascar) may serve as sites through which texts render environmental lessons more tangible and concrete."

P3) "Place is interactively drawn into communications: a computer user may choose his or her location on a map at the beginning of an interactive web application. Since such interactivity is highly variable and one's sense of place depends on many aspects of the technology and the user's relation to the technology, the place that emerges from communication interaction is a hybrid experience distinct from P1."

P4) "Place is a figurative dimension in social networks: a particular idea or message is felt to be "near," "close," or "right there" when it is on one's Facebook page, on a friend's Blog, or embedded as a link on a webpage one frequents. Chance of exposure in this case equates with proximity. (The figurative sense of place based on network adjacency is occasionally evoked as "virtual place" in the popular lexicon, but this term is complicated as it may also mean P2 or P3)."

As place is not just something "out there" but also a way of knowing, an epistemology. It is seen as both a process and a perspective, Adams and Gynnild point out.

As more and more of daily life is negotiated through technology's "cloud" the study of place as it relates to technology, modernity, and sustainability will become increasingly integral to understanding the ontologies (ways of being) and the epistemologies of modern people.

This link to the article leads to a paywalled page from the publisher, Taylor & Francis.