This paper draws the contours of a hitherto unexplored concept: connectivity justice. It refers to the rights and opportunities of individuals and organizations to manage whether and how they connect to different, especially digital, networks and infrastructures. It may range from having a bus-stop or mobile transmitter close to where one lives to possessing the means and skills for using digital authorization apps or booking platforms. As such, connectivity justice overlaps with, but also extends beyond mobility justice and data justice. The paper presents a conceptual overview of mobility justice, data justice and related terms – such as “mobility data justice” – showing how these terms overlap with connectivity justice, while at the same time crystallizing the distinct properties of the latter term. In a digital society, connectivity is largely a precondition for the capacity to move and to utilize media platforms involving datafication processes (with their positive and negative implications). At the same time, connectivity entails the capacity to withdraw from networks and thus avoid certain types of interactions, such as, surveillance. Connectivity justice is thus not only a matter of justly distributed opportunities to connect and utilize digital resources; it also concerns the right to disconnect. The latter aspect has been discussed especially in relation to certain forms of digital(ized) labor, but can be applied across social realms pertaining to citizens and consumers with various needs, desires and passions. As a case in point, the hospitality industry (including hotels, coworking spaces, etc.) provides good opportunities for studying how connectivity justice interacts with mobility and data justice pertaining to different clienteles. Connectivity justice may spur critical discussions within the field of geomedia studies that break away from any universalizing ethics in favor of an ethics of care. 

Digital technologies and the practices that follow, from reviews and recommendations on websites to content on social media platforms characterised by real-time connectivity are now inseparable from tourist experiences. Further, the technological, and infrastructural configurations that underpin digital practices in tourism are increasingly impinged upon by non-human actors (such as algorithms and data governance and regulatory measures). This special issue considers the ways in which data in the form of content, digital infrastructures and algorithmic governance shape and transform knowledge generated within and about tourism destinations and the populations who inhabit them. We focus on digital technologies as part of emerging media technologies to emphasise the material and regulatory assemblages that are increasingly inseparable from automated processes that facilitate the collection and appropriation of data on behalf of digital platform corporations. Emerging media technologies in the tourist encounter consider such engagements across different sensory exchanges, where tourists experience other places, landscapes, weather, people, sights and knowledge. Significant issues related to the role of digital technologies such as the inequalities they may perpetuate through the platformization of tourist destinations, the impacts of ‘smartness’ and the ways in which digital infrastructures are embedded in wider geopolitical relations of territorialization and contestation have been increasingly recognised in tourism geographies, yet comparative regional studies are still limited. We establish a research agenda to call for further, comparative research into the unfolding consequences of the role of digital infrastructures and algorithmic governance in the shaping of tourism destinations and the practices that follow.

The ubiquity of digital platforms in everyday life has considerable ramifications for contemporary leisure travel. Drawing on a long-term ethnographic investigation into the trials and tribulations of travel influencers, Locating the Influencer provides an account of the emergence of a new professional group in global tourism. Christian S. Ritter assesses the transformative role of travel vlogs in the mediation of tourist places using in-depth interviews, participant observation and network visualisations. In following journeys to European and Southeast Asian destinations, the travel ethnography depicts the spirit of adventure, mobile lifestyles, video-making practices and encounters with local tourism professionals. Locating the Influencer reveals how travel influencers build their professional expertise and engage in collaborations with local destination stakeholders, monetise their travel content, maintain parasocial relationships with large audiences, and the employ tactics to deal with algorithms. Amid climate disasters inducing lasting debates about both the future of tourism and sustainable tourism, Locating the Influencer comprehensively investigates the digital phenomenon of the travel influencer and offers a way to trace the polyvocal voices of platform-nested storytelling in global tourism. 

This article explores the formation of and future avenues for geomedia studies. Drawing on a citation network analysis, we map the development of the interdisciplinary research terrain from its origins and identify central citation clusters. The term "geomedia" has been used in the humanities and social sciences since at least the early 2010s. Subsequently, geomedia studies have been advanced through an interdisciplinary scholarship from human geography, media and communication studies, and other related research areas, assessing the increasingly complex interplay between media technologies and the production of space. To detect the origins and growth of geomedia studies as an emerging field, we conduct a bibliographic citation and keyword analysis of 57 references from the Web of Science core collection. The generated charts and network graphs reveal that research on geomedia has mainly evolved within media and communication studies. A citation cluster analysis shows how two sub-communities and approaches have emerged, tentatively called "visual geomedia studies" and "urban-sociological geomedia studies." A keyword cluster analysis reveals how the approaches are entangled with different theoretical perspectives. Given the societal relevance and the growing vitality of present-day geomedia studies, this article discusses the prospects of both approaches.

This chapter assesses the possibilities of integrating computational network analysis into ethnographic fieldwork. Grounded in examples from an ethnographic case of travel vlogging in Singapore, I discuss how participant observation in urban areas can be combined with network cluster analysis. The huge variety of data collection tools available to present-day media researchers has prompted a plethora of disparate data points and a multitude of ethical dilemmas. Computational network analysis provides manifold avenues for combining interpretations of localised meaning-making with visual evidence about networks of recommended videos on the popular video-sharing platform YouTube. The dissemination of video content is largely shaped by the platform’s recommender system. Exploring how the YouTube recommender algorithm drives the circulation of vlogs about Singapore’s touristic Clark Quay area, this chapter brings to light that the act of recommending a video is based on semantic similarities among video titles and video keywords. Furthermore, the methodological reflections presented in this chapter demonstrate that the combination of computational network analysis and ethnographic fieldwork provides holistic understandings of how highly mediated tourist places are unbound from their physical settings and drawn into platform ecologies, consisting of local areas of production, algorithmic technologies, disseminated place images and platform audiences. As algorithmic mediation plays an important part in accessing platform content about politics, health, culture and entertainment, a myriad of everyday practices is affected by recommender systems. Such algorithmic technologies raise multiple ethical concerns about the accountability of platform owners for a fair and balanced distribution of content on the internet.

The main aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the substantial potential of ethnography in the study of professional groups in the digital economy. Drawing on the case of a Norwegian software firm developing business intelligence software for oil and gas corporations, this chapter assesses how digital methods can strengthen ethnographic research into platform labour. The investigation into said firm illustrates how participant observation can be integrated with the digital methods walkthrough and computational network analysis. The proposed approach to workplace research is grounded in collecting ethnographic data within the physical settings of open-plan offices and retrieving natively digital data from platforms. Based on evidence from the case study of the Norwegian software firm, I suggest that combining ethnographic fieldwork with digital methods can bridge the hermeneutical gap between the subjective meanings employees attribute to their skilled practices and the meanings coded into platform affordances, allowing workplace researchers to design holistic projects for the study of Internet-saturated professions. The ethnographic research into software production implies that workplace researchers should establish, and adhere to, high ethical standards to protect the identities and interests of employees

Consumer drones can be increasingly spotted in tourist sites, and arguably the aerial technology has transformed how tourism in Singapore is experienced and represented. This investigation explores in empirical detail how the videomaking practices of DroneTubers contribute to the diversification of tourist encounters. Based on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork in the Southeast Asian metropolis and on digital platforms, this article maps tourist encounters facilitated by drone tourism and illuminates the formation of a platform ecology for travel drones. In recent years drone videos featuring Singapore’s urban landscapes have rapidly gained popularity on YouTube. Drawing on analyses of situated drone practices in Singapore’s Marina Bay and its audiovisual representation on digital platforms, this case study demonstrates how the platformization of drone tourism facilitates participatory gazing. This form of gazing made possible a prolonged negotiation of the meanings that the researched travel influencers and their audiences attributed to tourist attractions. The frequent use of travel drones in Marina Bay gave rise to an additional space of representation for the urban landscapes of Singapore. The ethnographic study finds that the videomaking practices of DroneTubers extended the scope of tourist encounters by establishing an everyday lived space where the allure of tourist attractions is negotiated through online co-presence. The findings of the study call into question long-standing conceptualisations of tourist encounters as place-bound practices and indicate how drone tourism established new interdependencies among local tourism professionals, tourists and platform audiences.