follow the instruction in the attached file.

20190402015637critical1 x20190402015615location_based_social_media_space__time_and_identi…_______4_identity_

we have one reading assignment “Location-based Social Media” by Evans Leighton and Michael Saker. Based on this reading assignment, you should write your third C.I–this is a very interesting piece and will give us a lot of ideas to discuss and reflect on. These ideas can inform our future social interventions by using social media outlets.

a. After reading chapter 4 called “Identity”, you should select a quote that you find meaningful (please, select a quote not an entire page–it will be easier for you to focus your argument as well).

c. Your C.I should be argumentative. Therefore, a thesis statement must be included. Ask yourselves; Why is this chapter important in order for me to understand how identity is shaped by social media? How can I connect this reading with civic engagement? Can we use social media in order to promote social change? Is that effective? What specific changes can I implement through the use of media outlets?

d. Your critical inquiry (C.I) should include 4 pages (as you already know; page 1 should include the selected quote and the questions you intend to answer in your C.I., page 2 and 3 should include your argument and developing ideas that support your argument, and page 4 should include your Works Cited page using MLA style)

e. Please, avoid plagiarism. If you are going to incorporate someone else’s ideas in your text, see how you should use MLA to in-text cite. Also, provide your reader with an analysis of the in-text citation and how it relates to your main argument.

f. You should follow MLA style and include a scholarly and a popular source to support your argument (Our reading materials do not count as part of your sources. You can use them in your analysis and in-text cite them but you should find another scholarly source and a popular one.) At this point in the semester, you should understand the basics of how to use MLA. Your grade is also contingent on the appropriate use of MLA as well as spelling and grammar.

MLA link:

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

CHAPTER 4

Identity

Abstract Building on the spatial and temporal elements of LBSNs devel-
oped in the previous two chapters, the focus here is LBSN use in the
context of identity

Specifically, the chapter explores the various ways
presenting and archiving spatial movements through LBSN can be called
upon to present a certain self to others. Research in this field has indicated
that ‘self-presentation has moved from examining interpersonal interac-
tions to displays through mass media’ (Mendelson and Papacharissi, The
networked self: Identity, community and culture on social network sites,
London, Routledge; 2010, p. 252), with SNSs offering new ways for
people to present themselves to others and ‘keep a particular narrative
going’ (Giddens, Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late
modern age, Stanford, Stanford University Press; 1991, p. 54). Drawing
on the work of Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life, Garden
City, Doubleday (1959) and his suggestion that identity is the conse-
quence of ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage’ behaviours, our analysis extends
these insights to LBSN. This understanding is then further developed with
reference to Schwartz and Halegoua’s New Media & Society, doi:
10.1177/1461444814531364 (2014, p. 1) ‘spatial self’, which serves as ‘a
theoretical framework encapsulating the process of online self-presentation
based on the display of offline physical activities’.

Keywords Identity � Spatial self � Narrative � Presentation of the self � Self-
image

Evans, Leighton, and Michael Saker. Location-Based Social Media : Space, Time and Identity, Palgrave Macmillan US,
2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umkc/detail.action?docID=4794250.
Created from umkc on 2018-08-09 13:11:30.

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4.1 SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES: SPACE, PLACE AND IDENTITY
As we have suggested throughout this book, to suggest that social media is a
big deal does not really do it justice. Social media usage is exponentially
growing. Let’s take a look at the numbers. In January 2016, there were 2.3
billion active social media users out of a total global population of 7.3
billion. This figure is up 10% on last year’s tally (We Are Social 2016). As
a consequence of this growth, social media has continued to be a hugely
important global medium of communication; a medium that not only
impacts the social realm, but equally influences the cultural, political and
the economic spheres of many societies today. Broadly speaking, social
media refers to various types of online communication platforms. These
platforms comprise forums, blogs, microblogs, wikis, social curation sites
and Social Networking Sites (SNS). The biggest category of social media is
SNS, with prominent examples including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Google +, YouTube and Instagram, to name but a few. To put things
into perspective, as of the first quarter of 2016 Facebook had 1.65 billion
monthly active users (Statista 2016), while Twitter had amassed 310 million
users, and LinkedIn had accumulated 433 million users. You would be
forgiven at this stage for assuming it is only really young people who engage
with SNS to post, pin and, on rare occasion, poke. You would be excused
for making this assumption, but you would be wrong. ‘Use of social media
has surged in recent years, initially spurred by young people but now used
by all demographic groups of the global population’ (Ellison 2013, p. 3).
Indeed, millions of people throughout the world interact with SNS on a
daily basis, and for a growing number of reasons.

SNS primarily enable ‘a culture of remote connectivity for . . . maintain-
ing a variety of social ties to primary and secondary groups of contact’
(Mendelson and Papacharissi 2010, p. 251). As a result of this and owing
to the growing popularity of SNS, a diverse multi-disciplinary body of
research has developed around this field (see Albarran 2013; boyd 2014;
Bradburne 2007; Dasgupta 2013; Edwards 2015; Flynn 2012; Issa et al.
2015; Kelsey 2010; Li 2013; Light 2014; Lipschultz 2014; Mallia 2013;
Mandiberg 2012; Obee 2012; Partridge 2011; Pătruţ et al. 2014; Ryan
2011; Fuchs 2014; Wilde 2012). Research has explored the impact of SNS
on education (Dasgupta 2013; Issa et al. 2015), with schools utilising
prominent platforms to enhance the teaching experience of their students
(Mallia 2013). SNS have been examined within the context of the law
(Lipschultz 2014) and politics (Pătruţ and Pătruţ 2014) with new policies

64 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

being implemented to police the ‘Facebook age’ (Fuchs 2014). Research
has also investigated the pivotal part social media now plays in business
(Flynn 2012) with SNS like Facebook and Twitter becoming integral to
many advertising and marketing campaigns (Li 2013; Wilde 2012).
Likewise, the communal impact of SNS and their connective potential
have been scrutinised with research probing how young people (Edwards
2015) and teenagers utilise social media (Livingston 2008; Obee 2012) to
facilitate their ‘complicated’ social lives (boyd 2014). Alongside this, and
importantly for our purposes in this chapter, ‘[studies] concerning prac-
tices of self-presentation and impression management on popular social
networking sites . . . have increased significantly’ (Schwartz and Halegoua
2014, p. 3; Milani et al. 2014; Ellison 2013; Senft 2012; boyd and Ellison
2007; Donath and boyd 2004). It is now widely accepted that people use
SNS to ‘present a highly curated version of themselves’ (Schwartz and
Halegoua 2014, p. 3; Mendelson and Papacharissi 2010), enabling ‘the
possibility for more controlled and more imaginative performances of
identity online’ (Papacharissi 2011, p. 307). This idea of personal identity
being a ‘highly curated’ process, involving some degree of choice, suggests
something important about the relationship between SNS and identity
itself that warrants further attention.

The proposition that identity is something people actively work on has its
roots in late modernity, when the ontological anchor (that identity is in some
way fixed) restraining the concept of identity began to loosen (Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim 2002; Turkle 1996; Giddens 1991; Lash and Friedman
1992; Butler 1990). The work of Giddens (1991), and specifically his
seminal text Modernity and Self-Identity, is helpful here for teasing out
some of the more significant changes this change in view provoked.
Giddens makes an immediate distinction between pre-modern societies
that are characterised by tradition, and modern societies which are post-
traditional. As David Gauntlett (2008, p. 104) explains, ‘[when] tradition
dominates, individual actions do not have to be analysed and thought about
so much, because choices are already prescribed by the tradition and cus-
toms’. In opposition to this, in post-traditional societies identity is ‘more
mobile, multiple, personal, self-reflective, and subject to change and innova-
tion’ (Kellner 1992, p. 141). In other words self-identity ‘is not a set of traits
or observable characteristics. It is a person’s own reflexive understanding of
their biography’ (Giddens 1991, p. 53). A good question at this juncture
would be ‘how does a person go about constructing his or her identity?’ In
answer to this question Giddens (1991, p. 81) proposes ‘lifestyle’, which he

4 IDENTITY 65

defines as being ‘a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual
embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but because
they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity’. So, on a daily
basis each of us will make any number of outwardly unimportant decisions
that pertain to a certain way of life. These decisions might include what
music we listen to, how we listen to music, the football team we support, the
clothes we wear, the smartphone we use, the applications we have, and so on.
In each instance, the outcome of these decisions, implicitly or explicitly, says
something about who we are, who we want to be, and very often, who we
wish to be seen as being.

Lifestyle choices ‘give our personal narrative an identifiable shape,
linking us to communities of people who are ‘like us’ – or people who,
at least, have made similar choices’ (Gauntlett 2008, p. 112). Giddens
(1991, p. 92) suggests this process produces a degree of ‘ontological
security’, which is ‘the confidence that most human beings have in the
continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding
social and material environment of action’. While the decisions sur-
rounding our lifestyles might outwardly appear trivial, inwardly they
can have a huge effect on our personal identity. As this is the case ‘the
materials’ used to construct and present our various identities, ‘as well
as the circumstances under which this construction takes place, acquire
an increased significance’ (Siapera 2012, p. 173). This last point is
particularly important in the context of the ‘Facebook age’ (Fuchs
2014), as SNS arrive with their own imagined affordances (Nagy and
Neff 2015) that have implications for identity formation. As Nagy and
Neff (2015, p. 1) explain, ‘imagined affordances emerge between users’
perceptions, attitudes, and expectations; between the materiality and
functionality of technologies; and between the intentions and percep-
tions of designers’. Regarding SNS then, imagined affordances may
include ‘digital objects like photos, videos and self-descriptions’ (Belk
and Ruvio 2013, p. 87) and the various meanings people attach to
these items. SNS afford new ways for people to curate, present and
perform who they understand themselves as ‘being’. The suggestion we
are making here is that identity is itself a performance played out
through various platforms, such as SNS (see Hogan 2010). This echoes
Goffman’s (1959) understanding of the self as explained in his classic
text The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

For Goffman (1959), all interactions are performances in which indivi-
duals attempt to present themselves in a certain light. ‘Goffman contends

66 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

that in interactions, individuals consciously contrive to give off particular
expressions in order to create particular impressions in the others around
them’ (Peachy and Childs 2011, pp. 16–17). Consequently, identity is the
outcome of enactments ‘in which the actors provide an impression of the
self’ (Cramer et al. 2011, p. 3). As with the majority of performances, an
audience is usually required:

When an individual plays a part he implicitly requests his observers to take
seriously the impression that is fostered before them. They are asked to
believe that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears
to possess, that the tasks that he performs will have the consequences that
are implicitly claimed for it, and that, in general, matters are what they
appear to be. (Goffman 1959, p. 28)

Taking the metaphor of the stage further still, Goffman argues that identity
can readily be divided between front and back regions of social interaction,
each with its own schema and corresponding subject position. Front regions
are the part of the performance witnessed by the spectators. As Clarke
(2008, p. 512) explains, ‘if we take the principle of performance, then we
may use stage props – desks, academic attire, white coats for doctors – in
order to manage a ‘front’’. That is to say, all performances of the self are
idealised (Manning 1992); actors wish to be ‘shown in the best possible
light to conform to cultural and societal norms’ (Clarke 2008, p. 512). In
stark contrast, back regions are those places ‘where performers can relax and
step out of character’ (Ellison 2013, p. 4); those spaces where ‘action
occurs . . . related to the performance but [are] inconsistent with the appear-
ance fostered by the performance’ (Goffman 1959, p. 115). As a result of
this disparity, ‘it is natural to expect that the passage from the front region
to the back region will be kept closed to members of the audience or that
the entire back region will be hidden from them’ (Goffman 1959, p. 116).

Two significant points have been made about the nature of identity that
bear repeating as a means to relate this understanding to locative media.
First, identity is not a passive activity; it is an active process that is the result
of various life choices, and which manifest themselves in myriad ways.
Second, identity can be interpreted as a performance in which people use
any number of front regions to present an idealised version of themselves
to others. In the digital age, one significant stage that these performances
are played out on is SNS. As detailed previously, research in this vein has
shown that individuals use the likes of Facebook to construct and present

4 IDENTITY 67

their identity to an audience (See Cunningham 2013; Senft 2012) with
factors such as age (Livingstone 2008) and the events surrounding them
(Schmalz et al. 2015) affecting what elements people choose to share.
Alice Marwick’s (2013) research on San Francisco’s Silicon Valley nicely
illustrates this point. From 2006 to 2010, Marwick (2013, p. 4) con-
ducted an ethnographic study that explored ‘how “the tech scene” [func-
tioned], what it [valued], and what it [produced]’. Through her work
Marwick quickly identified ‘a strict social hierarchy. It mattered what
company you worked for, whether you were an entrepreneur, and how
much attention you received online’ (Marwick 2013, p. 4). She also found
that certain people then treated their identity as if it were a brand that they
subsequently maintained through various SNS. An important imagined
affordance in these instances was the synchronous and asynchronous
messages SNS permitted (Hogan 2010). Individuals were able to choose
what features of themselves they wanted to immediately share with others,
just as they had the time required to respond to messages in a manner
congruent with their ‘brand’ and that enabled them to keep ‘a particular
narrative going’ (Giddens 1991, p. 54).

Due to various technological advancements, and the addition of numerous
features, the imagined affordances available through SNS have developed in
numerous ways. An important example of this is the mobile social network
Dodgeball (which we discussed briefly in Chapter 2), which predominately
revolved around people disclosing their location to prompt social encounters.
Through her research of this mobile social network, Humphreys (2007,
2010) identified a process she terms ‘parochialization’: by ‘creating, sharing
and exchanging information, social and locational’, users experienced a ‘sense
of commonality among a group of friends in a public space’ (Humphreys
2010, p. 768). That is to say, space felt more social and familiar. Following the
emergence of the mobile web, location has subsequently acquired an added
layer of complexity. People now use their smartphones to engage with digital
information on the move, just as this information has been endowed with a
sense of locality. For De Souza e Silva (2006) this development has produced
what she refers to as being ‘hybrid space’, which occurs when physical envir-
onments are overlaid with digital information. This hybrid space is the foun-
dation for location-based media, and location-based social networks (LBSNs)
like Foursquare. As detailed in previous chapters LBSN, and broadly speaking
locative media, have become the locus of a large body of research (de Souza e
Silva and Frith 2012, 2015; Evans 2014; Farman 2012; Wilken and Goggin
2014). Studies have chiefly examined the impact of LBSN on space and place

68 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

(Saker 2016; Saker and Evans 2016a). This focus, however, has more recently
extended to other areas, such as the impact of LBSN on sociability and social
coordination (Frith 2014), memory (Frith and Kalin 2016; Kalin and Frith
2016) and significantly here the marking of one’s location in the context of
self-presentation (Cramer et al. 2011; Guha and Birnholtz 2013; Saker 2016;
Schwartz and Halegoua 2014). While these latter example are a welcomed
additional to the canon of locative media, research exploring ‘practices
of . . . impression management’ (Schwartz and Halegoua 2014, p. 3) facili-
tated by LBSN are nonetheless still few and far between (Saker 2016). To
address this shortage, Schwartz and Halegoua (2014) propose the ‘spatial self’
as a suitable theoretical framework for approaching such a phenomenon.

‘The spatial self refers to a variety of instances (both online and offline)
where individuals document, archive and display their experience and/or
mobility within space in order to represent or perform aspects of their
identity to others’ (Schwartz and Halegoua 2014, p. 2). With the advent
of locative media, the imagined affordances surrounding social media have
moved beyond simply being textual and visual objects ‘like photos, videos,
and self-descriptions’ (Belk and Ruvio 2013, p. 87) and now equally
include ‘geocoded digital traces, geographical data visualisations and
maps of individual patterns of mobility’. (Schwartz and Halegoua 2014,
p. 2). As Goggin (2013, p. 202) notes, ‘place is a fundamental pillar of
human identity’ as well as ‘a key category of understanding the dynamics
of new media’. As a result of this, LBSN can be utilised by people to
support who they understand themselves as being through the places they
frequent and the connotations they assume these environments carry. It
would be careless of us to suggest that people have never used the places
they inhabit as part of self-expression prior to locative media, as this of
course simply is not the case. To this end, Schwartz and Halegoua (2014,
p. 5) readily list off a number of pre-digital instances of the spatial self,
which includes photo albums, slideshows, home videos, photographic
postcards (Milne 2010) as well as diaries of urban flâneurs stemming
from the Victorian era. In each example, space is employed to suggest
something meaningful about a particular period of time. This convergence
of identity and place can be interpreted as communicating something
meaningful about the how people are embedded in these examples.
While this is correct, it is equally our assertion that the spatial self as
enabled through LBSN (in this instance Foursquare) is notably different
to its pre-digital predecessors. First, Foursquare enables a level of imme-
diacy that simply was not possible before smartphones and the mobile

4 IDENTITY 69

web. Like the synchronous messages of SNS (Hogan 2010), Foursquare
can be used to share a person’s location instantly with a defined list of
friends. Secondly, Foursquare check-ins can be witnessed by a potentially
vast audience in real time. Thirdly, as discussed in the previous chapter,
Foursquare has a more complex archive function and temporal dimension.
Much like the asynchronous imagined affordance of SNS (Hogan 2010),
check-ins can be stored and then algorithmically encountered at a later
date for a variety of reasons. It is our suggestion that the spatial self as
configured through Foursquare involves users actively thinking about the
places they inhabit, what these environments might suggest about their
identity and whether this is a narrative they wish to disclose to their friends
or document for the future.

The aim of this chapter is therefore to examine Foursquare in light of
Schwartz and Halegoua’ (2014) spatial self. First, we will explore the
extent to which Foursquare users comprehend one of its imagined affor-
dances as revolving around the presentation of self through locality, and
therefore how suitable this framework is for approaching the meanings
underpinning the marking of location. Second, drawing on Giddens’
(1991) understanding of the role lifestyle plays in the identity formation,
we will expand upon the ‘spatial self’ to include identity-based practices
that don’t explicitly engage with the sharing of location but rather com-
prise the connotations associated with LBSN and digital culture. Third, we
will consider what role locational suggestions (or location search) play in
how users subsequently engage with their environment, and what effect
this has on their sense of self.

This chapter again reports on the two original research projects
designed to explore the spatial and social experience of Foursquare users.
The post-research thematic analysis for this chapter involved the careful
reading of full interview transcriptions, highlighting material that was of
interest to the underlining research question regarding how usage related
to issues of identity and self-presentation.

4.2 ‘I AM, WHERE I AM’
A defining feature of Foursquare its check-in function which has been
shown to impact social coordination (Frith 2014) as well as giving space a
sense of playfulness (Frith 2014; Saker and Evans 2016a). At the same
time, the ‘check-in’ exceeds this and can be employed as an indicator of
self. The users we spoke to were immediately aware that their check-ins

70 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

communicated something more than just where they were; their spatial
inscriptions communicated something about who they are and who they
understand themselves as being:

You choose what places you want to check-in, and this is like a creation of
yourself, your identity. (Robbie)

If you are going to a gig or whatever, you want to show off that you like that
band, or you went to that gallery. (Doug)

Our research readily supports Schwartz and Halegoua (2014) ‘spatial self’
as an appropriate framework for exploring the use of location as a method
for presenting a particular sense of self to others. For both Robbie and
Doug, their shared locations are called upon to illustrate something
noteworthy about the kind of people they understand themselves as
being. As Robbie puts it, his check-ins are ‘like a creation’ of himself.
Through a merging of the physical and the digital (the ‘hybrid space’
De Souza e Silva [2006] suggests) Foursquare has moved beyond the
visual and textual markings of SNS. LBSN have an impactful imagined
affordance of this intermingling of information and location in fashioning
place as a marker of identity. Our research echoes other studies that
appreciate the meanings that can the lie behind place-based performances
facilitated by LBSN, and that have made similar points in the context of
Foursquare and identity formation (see Cramer et al. 2011; Guha and
Birnholtz 2013).

As we detailed previously, the vast majority of performances are pre-
dicated on there being an audience to observe them. The same point can
be made with regard to Foursquare. In the following extract Jane discusses
being aware that her check-ins might be witnessed by other people:

So here is an interesting one between the policy and the practice. My main
motivation was keep a map, tracking where I had been in 2012, you know, I
went to these countries, and in England I went to these cities, and stuff like
that, but then I found myself checking-in to places that I was going to pretty
much a couple of times each week and stuff like that. I was in Newcastle, so I
checked-in to a lot of places in Newcastle, repeatedly, so, sometimes my
work place, not every day. I’d quite often check-in to the swimming pool,
probably because it is good to be seen going swimming. People will check-in
to the gym but won’t check-in to McDonalds. (Jane)

4 IDENTITY 71

Interestingly, Jane is conscious that she often shares when she has been
swimming because it is a good thing to be seen doing this activity. It isn’t
so much the swimming itself that Jane is outwardly interested then
(although this is of course part of it) but rather the realisation that could
be witnessed by other people. As a consequence of this, Jane is openly
mindful that her check-ins are grounded on the possibility of a corre-
sponding audience, and that these imagined spectators might read her
movements as well as the activities that take place in these locations as
being in some way indicative of her identity. This sense of revealing is
tethered to a particular lifestyle (Giddens 1991), one that is broadly
associated with health and fitness. This position is further cemented by
the next observation Jane makes, namely being that people will check-in to
the gym but they won’t check-in to McDonalds. Again, this underlines the
reflexive application of place in relation to identity. Just as location increas-
ingly ‘provides the context from which information is interpreted and
used’ (de Souza e Silva and Gordon 2011, p. 12), so too does the sharing
of one’s locale become a practical means of constructing the kind of
person he or she wants to be perceived as being. In the following extract,
Ben develops this point further, when he discusses the impact this knowl-
edge can have on the places he decides to share or document:

It’ll mostly be cafes and pubs that I like, maybe cinema as well, but then
interestingly I probably wouldn’t check-in at the Odeon. Another one
might be Starbucks. I actually got berated by my sister for this as well,
because I’ve always been quite vocal in my opposition to Starbucks. I hate
the fact that it is so omnipresent. So I made the mistake of checking-in at
Starbucks. I just ended up going there because a friend wanted to go there,
and then got berated by my sister because of it. (Ben)

The most revealing part of this excerpt is Ben’s suggestion that he ‘prob-
ably’ wouldn’t check-in at this particular cinema, with the implicit reason
for this being that he assumes it would suggest something negative about
him. In a similar vein, Guha and Birnholtz (2013) have observed the
‘multiple audiences’ users of LBSN have to contend with whenever they
are deciding whether to check-in at a particular place. An outcome of this
knowledge, the authors propose, is the provision of various strategies to
reduce the tension ‘multiple’ audiences can evoke such as the decision not
to disclose one’s location in the first place. The likelihood of this strategy
being employed is supported by Ben’s reluctance to disclose his trip to the

72 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

Odeon, as well as his pointed ‘mistake’ of checking-in at Starbucks and
the ensuing berating he received from his sister. Much like Robbie,
Doug and Jane, Ben recognises that Foursquare and its location-sharing
features communicate something about his identity, which in turn leads
to him engaging with his environment differently than he would outside
of this LBSN. Indeed, building on Guha and Birnholtz (2013) study,
our research demonstrates that Foursquare not only has the potential to
alter the spaces users choose to digitally share with their friends (as
established by Ben’s reflections), it also has the potential to affect the
kinds of places users physically frequent. The following extract helps
cement this point, when Drew discusses the influence Foursquare can
have on his behaviour:

I’m just thinking of this one person I’m ‘friends’ with on Foursquare. He’s
friends with Katie and added me on Facebook, then added me on
Foursquare. I know he probably looks at my account, and whenever I
look at the [Foursquare] newsfeed I see that he’s been to the gym, and it
makes me think, if he’s going to the gym, I should probably go to the gym.
So there are certain examples where, yeah, it would influence me and I
would look at other people and see what they are doing. (Drew)

There are two active processes at work in this example that warrant
inspection. First, through the imagined affordances of Foursquare Drew
is aware that his partner’s friend regularly goes to the gym, and that he is
accordingly the kind of person who would do this. Second, he is conscious
that this person also has access to his check-ins and may therefore know
that he doesn’t go to the gym. For Drew, this knowledge leaves him
feeling anxious that he too should probably go to the gym and in doing
so become the kind of ‘person’ he evidently wants to be. This point is
extended by Paul in the following extract:

I had a friend who would always check-in at the gym, while I wasn’t going, and
it would make me feel a bit rubbish, you know, he’s at the gym again, I can’t
believe it, he’s working out a lot! So I’ve taken that experience and now I’m
checking-in, so I feel better. I guess for some reason checking-in on it made it
feel a bit more like I’d actually been, because people knew I’d been, rather than
just going on my own. You know, people could go four or five times a week,
not check in, and you’d never know. For some reason, if I check in and everyone
sees he’s at the gym again, it feels a bit more like I’ve done something. (Paul)

4 IDENTITY 73

In this instance, Paul intriguingly details a desire to not only go to the gym
but also for his gym check-ins to be witnessed by others. Paul suggests that
it is through this ‘witnessing’ that the reality of his movements then feel
more real. This observation provides another thought-provoking position
on the affective character of the spatial self as configured through
Foursquare. In employing Foursquare as a digital platform from which
he might potentially be observed, Paul not only adapts his spatial move-
ments but also looks for a certain degree of spatial surveillance. Paul’s
check-ins are performed with two apparent motives in mind. First, they are
a marker of his movements. Second, they offer a vicarious viewpoint on
the identity he wants to project. Sarah outlines a similar purpose for her
check-ins:

I’m registered disabled, with the M.E. and I’m mainly housebound. So
Foursquare was just an incentive to get out and get mayorships, and to tell
friends and family that I’m out, rather than having to ring them and say I’m
at such and such a place today, they can instantly see, when I published my
check-ins, where I was and that I was getting out. It kept them happy
because they were concerned I wasn’t getting out, you know, cabin fever
and just wasting away in the house. It’s really brightened them up to see that
I’m getting out and about. (Sarah)

For Sarah then, aside from the appeal of Foursquare’s game mechanics
which includes points, badges and mayorships, there an equally
important imagined affordance of this LBSN is that it lets her friends
and family know she is ‘getting out’ and not just ‘wasting away in the
house’. This affordance also has implication for how Sarah perceives
herself:

Yeah it is a big part of my identity, which is why I particularly wanted
something about it at the wedding, because Foursquare is me, it’s such a
big part of my life, it’s made such a big impact on my life, I felt that if I had
something Foursquare involved, it would be more personal. (Sarah)

As Sarah states with some impact, ‘Foursquare is me’. Sarah doesn’t simply
use Foursquare to communicate that she has left the house although this is
of course part of it. More importantly, her usage allows Sarah to identify
with a version of herself which isn’t rooted in M.E. but is instead seen as

74 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

being physically active. This sense of self is then further strengthened
through the various social connections Foursquare opens up:

It gives me something to talk about that isn’t my M.E. Sometimes I just get
bored of saying, I didn’t go out yesterday, and I didn’t go out the day
before, you know, I was stuck in bed the day before that. It is just something
different to talk about. I’ll tell my friends what badges I unlocked, or
something like that. Some of them aren’t remotely interested. If I could
talk about it all day I know I would. (Sarah)

Here, our research demonstrates it that the use of location through
Foursquare is evidently different to the likes of Dodgeball, which predomi-
nately functioned to facilitate social interactions (Humphreys 2007, 2010).
In the series of previous examples, Foursquare is in part employed to perpe-
tuate a certain sense of self rooted in the various connotations associated with
particular environments. As a result of this, users spend more time thinking
about the spaces they inhabit, what these places might say about them and
the different audiences they present their location to through using LBSN.
Users adopt suitable strategies to contend with the multiple audiences they
might face, including the decision not checking-in to a certain environment,
or to avoid these places all together. And lastly, owing to the knowledge that
their check-ins might be witnessed by potential audiences, users are able to
strengthen their projected self-presentation through the vicarious subject
positions these digital imprints of location make on other people.

4.3 THE SPATIAL SELF ISN’T ALWAYS, WELL, SPATIAL
So far we have explored an assortment of instances where Foursquare
involves users performing and affirming who they understand themselves
as ‘being’ by sharing and documenting their day-to-day movements. At
the same time however, our research also discovered that the spatial self as
configured through Foursquare does not necessarily have to be spatial but
can instead revolve around the lifestyles with which this practice is asso-
ciated. For the most part, this lifestyle revolves around new technologies:

We’re both very much internet people. I’ve got Tweet Deck running on my
phone; I’ve got Tweet Deck running on my laptop in the office; it is also
running on my laptop at home. When I go for a cigarette I am probably
reading foursquare or Twitter. (Adrian)

4 IDENTITY 75

I think I just read about it somewhere, and thought that sounds like some-
thing I’d be interested in. I’m into all of this kind of stuff anyway, new
gadgets, technologies and apps. I’m all over it anyway. So I’ll hear about
something and think that sounds cool let’s try it out. (Nigel)

As Nigel notes, his interest in Foursquare is symptomatic of a broader
interest in ‘new gadgets, technologies and apps’ as well as a desire to try
these technologies out. This was a lifestyle indicator shared by many of the
users we spoke to:

Okay, so at university I studied television production, I now work with Apple,
the retail store, and I’ve always been very ‘techie’ and into your kind of social
media and sort of web technologies in a way. I dabbled in web design myself.
So yeah, it’s always been something that has attracted me really. (Paul)

I guess I’ve been interested in it before phones had GPSs. So while I was at
Southampton I was quite interested in the idea of checking-in or some kind
of location-based game. I tried very hard with a friend at Southampton to
make something like that. It was in the days of smartphones running Java
and things like that – before Android – and trying to get it to talk to a
Bluetooth GPS, and all kinds of crazy things like that. So I was quite excited
when the technology caught up. So yeah, initially I was playing Gowalla, and
then moved onto foursquare. I guess it does kind of highlight my interests.
I’m interested in maps and location and things. I’m interested in technology
and gadgets and things. (Ryan)

Significantly here, Nigel (an Information Technology [IT] Support Team
Manager), Paul (an Apple Store Genius) and Ryan (a Technical Architect
for the BBC) all have occupations that revolve around technology and
each reference these connections when discussing their association
Foursquare. This is also the case with John, whose job in the IT industry
meant he grew up with new technologies. There is a lifestyle that this kind
of history implicitly refers to, which in John’s mind goes some way
towards explaining his use of this LBSN:

Well, probably the most pertinent fact would be that I worked for IBM for
thirty-seven years, and working in the IT industry, with computers as an
emerging industry, I started work obviously before there were any PCs or
mobile phones, or anything like that, so I sort of grew up with that
technology and really developed an interest in the new technologies as

76 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

they emerged. I tended to work with younger people. I was probably old
enough to be their dad. In later life I worked in IT support, and the people I
worked with were very young, and I think that influenced me a great deal
because they were always very keen on new technologies, and I tended to go
along with them. When the new mobile phones came out I was quite
interested in them. I haven’t had one for very long, because I just never
got around to getting one, but then I was bought one for my birthday and I
have been using it for well over a year and a half, and yeah, I’m interested in
all technologies really, computers, cameras, mobile phones, anything of that
ilk. (John)

For Doug too, it is his role teaching Digital Media with the kind of
commitments this position entails that eventually led to him signing up
to Foursquare:

I tend to sign up to every social network going, because of my job. Gowalla
sounded a little more interesting because I quite like the idea of reality and
the social network coming together. So unlike Twitter where it doesn’t
really have any impact, this was focused on merging these two aspects,
which I thought was quite interesting. Some of it is off of the back of this
old Carnegie Mellon talk by this guy, I can’t remember his name, about
gamifying a lot of general process, like going on a bus and getting points
etcetera, he goes in to this whole thing, a lot of it is about Facebook, and I
was kind of interested in this just generally, so it was just a service that I
thought sounded interesting, so I joined Gowalla, which was pretty cool.
Obviously Foursquare was coming along at the same time. I just didn’t think
Foursquare was as good. (Doug)

When it comes to identity, continuity is understandably an important part
of the phenomenon as it is precisely through continuity that the past is
explained and ‘orientated towards an anticipated future’ (Gauntlett 2008,
p. 108). An ‘anticipated’ future can readily be recognised in the various
research extracts detailed previously, as users evidently comprehend their
connection with Foursquare as being a natural progression in the context
of their individual biographies. In addition our research also found was
that users, rightly or wrongly, held strong beliefs about how their friends
viewed them and what social expectations they therefore faced:

All my friends know I like to be in touch with up-and-coming things like
that, and foursquare is a very up-and-coming thing. I’ve thought so for the

4 IDENTITY 77

past two and a half years. So far so good. I think if I didn’t know about
foursquare I don’t think that would be right, because foursquare has been a
big thing, and it’s been up-and-coming for a while, and I think it is some-
thing people will think: he’ll know about Foursquare. (Mark)

In a similar way, John’s use of Foursquare is also as a result of the
expectations he feels his friends have of him as the ‘person with a smart-
phone’. This expectation then becomes reflexively intertwined with his
own sense of self as well a feature that effectively marks him out from his
retired peers:

When we’re out and about, you know, and I’m using my phone, and I’m
using it in a social media situation, that to my friends is a pain. When they say
to me, we need a restaurant, can you go on your mobile phone and find a
local restaurant, or we need petrol where is the nearest garage, then sud-
denly the smartphone becomes a useful tool, so that is my sort of my
identity, the person with the smartphone. (John)

‘To be a “person” is not just to be a reflexive actor, but to have a concept
of a person (as applied both to the self and others)’ (Giddens 1991,
p. 53). For Mark, this means that it would be ‘wrong’ if he didn’t use
Foursquare as he comprehends himself as being identified by his associa-
tion with up-and-coming technologies. Our research demonstrates that
Foursquare provides users with another means of extending or affirming
themselves and their self-image precisely through these expectations.
John comments that his friends in part identify him through his smart-
phone, which has become a significant part of his story. As Giddens
(1991, p. 54) explains:

The individual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with
others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually
integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the
ongoing ‘story’ about the self.

For both Mark and John, the expectations they experience from their
friends are explicitly integrated into their ongoing narratives, which then
allows them to reinforce further their respective selves through the prac-
tice of using Foursquare. Alongside the perpetuation these personal nar-
rative in the manner detailed previously, our research also illustrates that

78 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

Foursquare can provide users with the opportunity to connect with com-
munities of people who share similar lifestyles, which has implications for
the cohesiveness of their identities:

I’ve met some really interesting people online. I wouldn’t say they’d all be
my best friends or my drinking buddies, but they’re good to have a chat to
when you’re bored late at night and there is nothing on television, or you
can’t be bother to read that night; there’s always someone on Twitter or
someone in the forum that you can have some banter and a laugh and a joke
with. There’s just a small group of us and we get on really well. (Dennis)

It is nice to have that little circle of people that I can literally rabbit about
foursquare with, all day. I am bonkers about foursquare. I don’t know why
I’ve got the enthusiasm that I have? I just appreciate it so much, as it has
changed my life; it has got me out the house so much more than what I used
to. So I’ve just got this big appreciation for it. (Sarah)

Interestingly, in the latter excerpt the ‘circle’ of friends Sarah alludes to is
geographically dispersed. This is a situation that many of the users who
employed Foursquare in this way experienced. However, this isn’t to
suggest that Foursquare can’t or doesn’t lead to physical encounters, as
Dennis explains:

I have in the sense of, like this guy Ian, I had no idea who he was, then I got
a message saying he’d stolen my mayorship, and then I saw his Twitter, and
tweeted him to say, give that back, and then you just get chatting, and it has
got to the point where we’ve gone for one drink. I wouldn’t say we were
going to be best friends. (Dennis)

This last point is significant, as ‘[while] television, telephone, and internet
research have shown the importance of media to build new social con-
nections . . . there has been relatively little research exploring how mobile
technology may also serve this function’ (Humphreys 2008, p. 115). For
some users, by associating with this particular lifestyle, Foursquare not
only confirms their identity but equally provides new social opportunities
that then similarly feed back into their ongoing stories of self. In summary
then, our research illustrates that the spatial self can be extended to
practices that don’t strictly engage with spatiality, but that revolve around
the formation and maintenance of identity nonetheless.

4 IDENTITY 79

4.4 LOCAL SEARCH AND FEELING ‘LOCAL’
An important element of Foursquare is the locational suggestions (or
location search) it can provide. This feature involves algorithmically draw-
ing together users’ historical check-ins to make place-based suggestion
that are congruent with the user’s history when they are seeking locative
inspiration, such as a place to eat. From the beginning, this function was
heavily promoted as offering a different kind of tool for exploring space
(Cramer et al. 2011; Frith 2013). In association with this understanding,
many of the users we spoke to primarily used Foursquare as a viable way of
navigating their environment. As Robbie explains:

It has just given me an insight into exciting places I should go. (Robbie)

In the following extract and while thinking about how Foursquare has
changed the way he approaches going out, Terry details a similar situation:

As corny as this may sound when me and Lucy are thinking where we shall
go for lunch or dinner, I don’t have that problem anymore; I’m guided by
foursquare. You can look at what is around you and go here, here and here,
and I think that’s great. I don’t have that thing where you end up going to
the same place over and over again. If you do it, it is because you get value
for money, not because you are just bored. (Terry)

This kind of use is also demonstrated by Henry in the following text.
Henry, having recently moved to London, uses this LBSN to help him
familiarise himself with an otherwise unfamiliar city:

I don’t use foursquare with the intention of letting people know where I am
right now, so they can find me, nor do I use it to see where people are.
That’s not the reason why I use it. I like to use it when I check in so I can
learn about new places to go for dinner, and stuff like that, but not to stalk
people. (Henry)

Mark makes a similar point while discussing his use of Foursquare during a
physics trip to Geneva. Again, it should be note here that Mark’s reflexive
awareness of his own identity is immediately apparent in his language:

I had a physics trip to Geneva to see LHC, and we were there and everyone
was like I don’t know where we should go to night and I was like, this is a

80 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

job for me then, and found a really good crêperie nearby, and we went there,
and everyone had about five crêpes because they were so good. So that was
good. (Mark)

What the previous excerpts demonstrate is that Foursquare provides these
users with place-based information that effects where they go and what
they do. At the same time there is of course more to this process than
simply the provision of locational information, as such information could
readily be accessed from a variety of sources that aren’t necessarily locative
or indeed digital. For these users, Foursquare evidently offers them some-
thing that they trust in terms of suggesting which places they should visit.
Indeed, there is an implicit and unerring belief in the nature of the
recommendations Foursquare delivers. Owing to this, these users are
interminably confident that by employing Foursquare they are able to
access to a city that would otherwise be hidden from them; a city that is
cordoned off from those who aren’t in the know, as it were. The following
extracts helps further develop this point:

In London there was a completely hidden, random dim sum restaurant that
I found. It was down a small street in China Town that you wouldn’t know
about because the back entrance is where the restaurant is, and there’s just a
small door, and there it is. (David)

During the Olympics I was over in South London, I tend not to go south of
the river very often, I hate to say it, and literally opened the ‘explore’ feature
and just started searching for restaurants, within a mile, and found the most
amazing tapas restaurant [José] I have been to in my life, just based on the
fact so many people had recommended it. That was my hidden gem. (Amy)

In many ways this place [favourite café] is a hidden gem. It is almost as if you
are a secret member of the Foursquare club. (Richard)

I was on holiday recently. I went to Malaga and didn’t necessarily know that
much about it. For trying to find places to eat that weren’t tourist hotspots,
Foursquare was perfect. So you could do the ‘explore’ option and say that
you wanted somewhere to eat and then it would give me a list of places that
are popular on Foursquare, and obviously people on Foursquare are more
likely to be locals than tourists, or so I assumed. So it made it a lot easier to
try and find places. I think they must have been local people, because most
of the tips were in Spanish and I couldn’t understand any of them. (Ben)

4 IDENTITY 81

Another important element of LBSN use then is the faith that its locative
suggestions are written by people who really know the areas, further
cementing the suggestion that this information couldn’t be accessed
through other channels. Whether this is accurate or not is of course
impossible to know. Furthermore, the veracity of this belief is inconse-
quential. Instead, what matters, and what we want to focus on here, is that
it is precisely through this belief that these users are able to experience a
city that subsequently feels different. Humphreys’ (2007, 2010) research
on Dodgeball and specifically the process she terms ‘parochialization’,
which materialises when the social sentience enabled through this mobile
social networks makes users feel like they are interminably inhabiting
familiar environments, provides a nuanced way of examining the impact
of Foursquare on space, place and indeed, identity. Regarding Foursquare,
it is our assertion that local recommendations do not so much make space
feel different, or ‘parochial’, but alters how users themselves feel in these
environments. When using the local search function users believe they are
privy to locational information which is itself ‘local’. By utilising this
information, these users are subsequently able to take on a subject position
that feels similarly local, and that then impacts their experience of space:

It feels more like getting the insider’s view on the local area because it is the
people that live there that are most likely to be checking-in regularly and
posting tips for places. (Ben)

The ‘tips’ are probably my favourite thing about Foursquare. You do just get
the inside deal from regular users that go there, that say, don’t try this or do try
that. It doesn’t feel as daunting or scary as when you go somewhere and stare
at the menu thinking, oh god what shall I have, and that kind of thing. (Sarah)

The standout experience I had was in Paris. We went to one of the
museums, and it was the day that we were going home, so time was tight,
and it was in the morning. So we got there and the queue was literally
zigzagging. So I was standing in the queue and I thought I’ll check-in and
while I was standing there I was reading the tips and one of them said the
queue is massive, however, if you go around the corner you’ll find the queue
for the library, which gets you in the same place, in terms of the ticketing
area, and there is hardly anyone in that cue, so go to that cue and you will
beat the main queue. I almost felt like we were committing an offence.
(Nigel)

82 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

Now I don’t go to McDonalds often, but it was with the kids so it was a
treat, so this is a McDonalds based story; the tip on it said that a particular
member of staff, who must have had a badge, was like really horrible, and it
was kind of a bit weird, because then I knew a secret there, because I’m
thinking that member of staff probably isn’t on Foursquare, they don’t
know I am here, and I’m now watching them. It does give you a more
authentic experience, although authentic is such a terrible word. (Doug)

Regarding Schwartz and Halegoua (2014) notion of the spatial self then, the
use of local search suggests a different relationship between identity and
place as well as a different relationship between Goffman’s (1959) front and
back regions. Take Paul’s gym check-ins for instance; these inscriptions were
explicitly motivated by a desire to perform the kind of person Paul wanted to
be seen as ‘being’. In performing this practice, Paul is able to present himself
in this fashion and he is also able to have this identity affirmed through the
imagined audience that might witness any one of his accumulative enact-
ments. This process then has a marked effect on the ‘passage from the front
region to the back region, which Goffman (1959, p. 116) suggests is ‘kept
closed to members of the audience’ (Goffman 1959, p. 116). For Paul, the
witnessing by others of his movements enables him to distance himself
gradually from the performative side of his identity. As a symptom of this
distancing, the ‘passage from the front region to the back region’ (Goffman
1959, p. 116) is then closed to Paul too. As a consequence, the performed
identity Paul observes through his Foursquare use ceases to be a performance
and instead becomes his identity. In contrast, the users in the examples
detailed previously aren’t necessarily engaging with locational recommenda-
tions to disseminate a certain sense of self but are instead interested in
gaining access to a place-based experience that would otherwise be con-
cealed from them. However, by engaging with this kind of information and
when considered alongside the belief this information is indigenous, their
self-identities are altered. While Paul believes his front stage performance is
indicative of his back region, users like Nigel and Ben are very aware of the
difference between these two stages. Furthermore, it is precisely through this
difference between the two stages that Nigel and Ben are able to adopt
subject positions that momentarily feel authentically ‘local’.

Our research also provides a more nuanced take on perhaps why Ben didn’t
want to be identified with the Odeon or Starbucks. An important function of
Foursquare for some of the users we spoke to was that it supposedly helped
them avoid places that they deemed to lack a certain genuineness. This

4 IDENTITY 83

function was particularly important to these users because they similarly
understood themselves as being the kind of people who frequented
places that weren’t commercial chains, but were more ‘real’ or ‘authen-
tic’ than this. Again, the veracity of this faith is inconsequential. What is
important is that these users believed it, and that this belief then
impacted how they used Foursquare. For these users then, another
important imagined affordance of this LBSN was that it offered some
locative protection against their supposedly authentic identities being
threatened by places that lacked the same degree of authenticity. By
then marking themselves as present in these places, users’ identities were
then further reinforced.

4.5 FOURSQUARE AND THE SPATIAL SELF IT CONFIGURES
This chapter has examined the various ways in which one’s physical move-
ments alongside the use of LBSN that may take place in these environments
can be used to perpetuate a certain sense of self. This began with an
examination of the imagined affordances of SNS, and the various ways
SNS are used by people to ‘present a highly curated version of themselves’
(Schwartz and Halegoua 2014, p. 3) before moving on to important
advancements, including smartphones and the mobile web, which has led
to location being incorporated into social networking sites. Locative media
and LBSN such as Foursquare have immediate implications for questions
that pertain to identity formation, as borne out by our research. Indeed, the
Foursquare users we spoke to were immediately aware that their check-ins
connoted something meaningful about the kind of people they are, which
had the potential to be witnessed by different audiences. As a result of this,
for many of the users their check-ins weren’t something that they simply did
on a whim without thinking about factors such as where they were and what
this place might suggest about their identity but was rather a process that
demanded more deliberation and thought. For these users Foursquare
became a platform that could be called upon to present facets of their
identity through the environments they frequented (Guha and Birnholtz
2013). As a ‘theoretical framework’ then ‘that explores the presentation of
the self, based on geographic traces of physical activity’ (Schwartz and
Halegoua 2014, p. 5), the spatial self was readily supported by our research.
As Cramer et al. (2011, p. 9) argue, ‘[ultimately], what this means is that
location has changed from being something you have (a property or state) to
something you do (an action)’.

84 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

Drawing on Goffman’s (1959) suggestion that identity is itself a perfor-
mance divided between front and back regions, Foursquare is a viable plat-
form for enacting one’s sense of self. What is most important about the
various self-presentations discussed throughout this chapter is the way in
which users utilised their respective spatial stages to perform a version of
themselves that they were then able to believe in, precisely because of the
digital traces these performances left behind. Foursquare and the imagined
affordances that relate to identity formation seemingly infuse these self-
projections with a measure of validity that simply isn’t possible without the
incorporation of location, and the vicarious legitimacy this outwardly brings
in its wake. For users like Paul and Sarah they were at once both performer
and spectator of their own Foursquare feeds, with the division between front
and back regions effectively closed in the process. By keeping this passage
locked, Paul and Sarah were able to suspend any disbelief they may have had
about the reality of their identities. In other words, and while continuing to
use Goffman’s (1959) terminology, as a symptom of Foursquare and the
spatial self it configures the division between front and back stage is gradually
erased until the point there is no division to speak of. It is precisely through
this process that the spatial self of Foursquare enabled users to present
identities that then felt more real.

For Humphreys (2010, p. 775) an important feature of mobile social
media like Dodgeball, and the social thinking they enable, is that they ‘make
the urban environment [seem] less cold and anonymous’. In relation to
LBSN then, it isn’t simply that Foursquare increased the sociability of space,
although this is part of it (Frith 2014); equally Foursquare enabled users to
further embed their identities into the various spaces they frequented on a
daily basis. Put differently, for the users we spoke to Foursquare meant that
they could present a sense of self that exhibited a degree of locational
consistency with regard to the perceived character of places that they
checked-into. Building on research within this field that has observed
LBSN being employed to present the self through location (Guha and
Birnholtz 2013) then, our research significantly demonstrates that
Foursquare can in fact alter the places a person goes, with a view to
establishing a sense of self that is reliable and consistent. To be clear, we
are not suggesting that all Foursquare check-ins are ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ in
this sense, as user can of course check-in to places where they are not
physically located or check-in to an incongruous place. However, for the
most part the users that we engaged share a similar belief that user check-ins
should be accurate, as anything else goes against the ‘spirit’ of Foursquare.

4 IDENTITY 85

Just as this chapter sought to employ the ‘spatial self’ as a lens through
which to consider the various uses of Foursquare, our research also
demonstrated that this framework can be extended in two ways. First,
the spatial self isn’t always as spatial as its eponymous title. For the
Foursquare users we spoke to, their use of Foursquare wasn’t simply
something that had happened out of the blue but was rather part and
parcel of a much bigger narrative that they had been developing over a
period of time. This narrative revolved around a particular lifestyle, which
as Giddens (1991) points out is an important indicator of a person’s
identity. In this instance, the lifestyle in question comprised new technol-
ogies and an interest in gadgets. Many users explained that they had
become involved in Foursquare through this lifestyle choice, with their
affirmed inclination for new technologies enabling their identities to
be effectively continued. In addition to this, these users also strongly
believed that their friends perceived them in a manner as people who
would use LBSN, and thus they felt in some ways obligated to engage
with Foursquare. We also established the location recommendations
Foursquare provides do not simply alter the places uses go, but also impact
how these users feel about themselves in these places. Through a belief in
the ‘indigenous’ character (i.e. user generated) of the locational recom-
mendations Foursquare provides, these users were able to experience space
in a manner that felt ‘local’. This accordingly enabled them to fleetingly
adopt a commensurate subject position of ‘being local’. Interestingly here,
users did not enact these locative suggestions (front stage) to influence
themselves (back stage) – quite the opposite in fact. Nonetheless, it was
precisely through these performances, and a stark awareness of them being
a performance, that these users momentarily were able to experience a
sense of self that felt unerringly ‘authentic’.

86 LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

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