Media Coverage of Location-Based Services

Seattle.
The next speaker in this AoIR 2011 session is Miao Feng, who asks about the privacy consequences of a site like Foursquare? Location-based services are nothing new, and address a local mass audience; what needs to be examined is how technology is diffused, what social change it promotes, and how it is culturally and socially negotiated.

Perceptions of personal computers since the 1980s were largely positive; such computers came to our houses as inevitable improvements to our lives. Perceptions of the Net turned from the overwhelmingly positive to a more speculative perspective; with location-based services, privacy concerns were immediate, but became less significant after prolonged use; sites like Please Rob My House pointed to these concerns, however.

Miao’s study examined world-wide media coverage of location-based services in newspapers, magazines, and blogs, and she identified two stages in this coverage; early explanations focussed on such services as new forms of social media, while privacy never played much of a role. (Hm, I think I’m not getting this completely.)

Negative portrayals were highlighting the issues of privacy and the potential exploitation of location information by malicious others. However, for the most part, the potential of fun and social connection seemed to outplay the risk, and there was a general preference for taking an economically optimistic perspective.