Mediated sense of place: Effects of mediation and mobility on the place perception of German professionals in Singapore

Abstract

This article examines the differences that digital media (Internet and mobile communications) and mobility create for sense of place. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 German professionals in Singapore, it analyses digital media choices and use during the relocation and settlement process in the destination of migration and the effect of these practices on migrants’ perception of place. It demonstrates how the primary reason to use digital media conversed from individual interests and needs in relation to the relocation and/or initial exploration of the city to the social and emotional ramifications of their use the longer the interviewees stayed in Singapore. It makes a theoretical contribution to the understanding of how digital and offline places combine in the construction of sense of place, how the digital sphere affects engagements with place, attachment to it and sensuous experiences of it.

Keywords

Cyberspace digital media digital space mediation migration mobility new media place perception sense of place virtual space

Introduction

I still remember always seeing the Merlion. […] and pictures of the Chinese New Year Parade. […] On the internet, yes. However, I have never been there [laughing]. At that time, I thought it was cool, so colourful. Now, I don’t think I necessarily have to go there. However, at that time I thought: cool that is definitely interesting.¹ (Ines, 43, 4 years in Singapore)

Ines has lived in Singapore for 4 years, and the above quote reflects her vivid memory of an online search that she conducted before moving to the city-state. It shows that she still remembers images of places from that search that she has never seen outside of the Internet. After relocating to Singapore, she reevaluated her mediated impressions and decided that based on what she had seen, she would not visit the actual offline place. Nonetheless, these first associations remain part of her overall sense of the city and today, they intermingle with her offline experiences of it. The quote urges one to inquire into the qualities of the changes brought about by the increasing digitalisation of our everyday life and increased mobility to our experience and perception of place (cf. Bork-Hüffer 2016, Massey, 2012⁷; Mendoza and Morén-Alegret, 2013; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry, 2007). Through new information and communication technologies (ICTs), more than ever, people’s perception and ideas are ‘shaped by a bombardment of information and images from around the globe’ (Ho, 2006: 385). While existing work has examined the impact of print and broadcast media on environmental perception and knowledge, there is a growing demand for research on the effects that the digital experience of place – that occurs through exposure to the Internet and mobile communications – has on people’s sense of place (Holmberg et al., 2012).

In this article, I address the difference that digital media (the Internet and mobile communications) create for people’s perception of place and their sense of place. My argument is based on an analysis of the practices of digital media choice and use by migrant professionals and their changes during the migration process and after settlement. I argue that relocating to a new place necessitates a conscious reflection on the nature of the future living space, leading to an ideal entry point for research on the role of mediation in place perception.

The article is based on an examination of 30 in-depth interviews with German professionals in Singapore. It compares digital media utilisation patterns and their effects on sense of place between migrants who are newly arrived in the city-state and those who have lived there for several years. The main research questions are as follows: How do interviewees’ choice and utilisation of digital media change throughout the migration process? How does their use of digital media affect their sense of place? How does their use of digital media and their offline experience of a place combine in forming their sense of place? With regard to sense of place I discuss in particular, what difference digital media make for people’s attachment to place and their sensuous experience of place, as well as the effects of socio-political space on sense of place. In doing so, I draw on theories of sense of place, of digital space and its interrelation with offline space as well as on writings on migrants’ place-making.

The frequency and intensity with which my interviewees used digital media and the role it played with regard to their sense of the city varied widely. The objective of this article is not to judge whether offline or online experiences had a greater impact on moulding interviewees’ sense of place; rather, the aim is to exemplify some of the diverse ways through which digital media can influence place perception and to depict some of the complex interrelations of online and offline experiences of place.

Mediation, mobility and sense of place

Sense of place has been considered from a wide spectrum of perspectives and by scholars from various disciplines, for example, geography, environmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, media studies, literature studies, history, and fine arts, and remains a vague concept (Agarwal, 2005; Shamai, 1991; Shamai and Ilatov, 2005). Works on sense of place have highlighted the relevancy of different aspects regarding people’s perception of place, for instance, the importance of feelings of belonging and attachment to place (e.g. Buttimer, 1980; Liu, 2014; Marcu, 2012; Pred, 1983; Qian and Zhu, 2014), the role of the identity of place (e.g. Buttimer, 1980; Carter et al., 2007), and of place for identity (Liu, 2014, 2015; Qian and Zhu, 2014; Singh, 2015) as well as the influence of sensuous experiences on place perception (e.g. Rodaway, 1994; Tuan, 1979, 1977).

All of the above-cited contributions and the great majority of other existing publications have focused on the experience of a non-mediated place in their conceptualisation of sense of place. However, how do digital media change place perception and people’s sense of place, if they do at all? At the beginning of the 1980s, Meyrowitz (1984) postulated that electronic media eventually unitise people’s knowledge and perception of space and therefore its specificity. Differing from this perspective, Ogden (1994) denoted digital space as a ‘parallel universe’ and as a ‘spaceless place’ (p. 715). Similarly, other early studies described digital space as being fictional, imagined or abstract and being opposed to the ‘real’ physical world. Digital geographers have strongly challenged these and similar claims (cf. summaries of this discussion in Batty, 1997; Dodge, 1999; Graham, 1998; Kinsley, 2014; Kitchin, 1998; Malpas, 2008; Zook et al., 2004). As Massey (2012⁷) noted, the

question which is raised by speed-up, by “the communications revolution” and by cyberspace, is not whether space will be annihilated but what kinds of multiplicities (patternings of uniqueness) and relations will be co-constructed with these new kinds of spatial configurations. (p. 91)

Furthermore, Kitchin (1998) argued that mediated and physical space will co-evolve or be recombined as ‘cyberspaces coexist with geographic spaces providing a new layer of virtual sites superimposed over geographic spaces’ (p. 403). Along these lines, Crang et al. (1999) expounded how offline and online social realities are interdependent, and in a similar vein, Chan (2008) concluded that by now there is a ‘considerable consensus that virtual space enables actions and practices that are not entirely independent from (and are no less real than) actual space-time and the structured realities they constitute’ (p. 172).

While acknowledging ongoing social change, Graham (2004) made it clear that ICTs are not causing ‘some wholesale, discrete, break’, but that ‘we are experiencing a complex and infinitely diverse range of transformations where new and old practices and media technologies become mutually linked and fused in an ongoing blizzard of change’. Miller and Horst (2013: 12) claimed that rather than fundamentally changing social reality, digital media constitute a new frame through which individuals experience the same world. I argue that there is a need to analyse the effects of this differential frame on place perception to understand what new patterns and multiplicities it entails. An expanding set of digital technologies is constantly creating new opportunities for engagements with space that produce a continuing need for research on the effects of their usage.

When looking at the specific qualities of place perception that are influenced by digitalisation, Zook et al. (2004) noted that digital media, in particular, allow visual and aural experiences of space. Kellerman (2006) postulated that digital spaces ‘do not permit the physical sensing of places, nor do they provide for a third dimension of depth, natural movements, air breezes and winds, or smells and sunshine’ (p. 132). Diverging from both, Lemos (2008) argues that ‘new informational technologies reinforce our sense of place’ because they allow for virtual mobility, whereby a place can be experienced without physical presence, and they stimulate imaginary mobility and an imaginary sensing of place (p. 103). However, it must be noted that this also applies to other types of ‘old’ media, such as radio and television. Nevertheless, ‘untethered digital geographies allow individuals more freedom and control of the process of constructing new (and often highly personal) geographies of how and where they create and consume information’ (Zook et al., 2004: 168). Being more personalised, they spur subjective associations and imaginations of places more than old media do. In this article, my findings show how the visual and aural perception of digital content can stir olfactory, gustatory and tactile imaginations of a place and how all of these factors combine with experiences of an offline place in the formation of sense of place.

At the same time, I investigate the relevancy of the socio-political setting for sense of place. Pred (1983) emphasised that it is important to consider the role of power relations in the formation of sense of place and in imposing a sense of place upon people. As Massey (2012⁷) argued, space and place are not neutral. Our everyday experiences of space and place are linked to our own position in the stratified assemblages of the city (McCann and Ward, 2011) and to the online and offline micro- and macro-politics of space (cf. e.g. Davies, 2013; Kitchin et al., 2013) that influence our opportunities to explore space and place, our perception of space and place and the meaning and emotions that we attach to place. Thus, whereas an analysis of sense of place needs to incorporate the role of sensuous experiences and of the meaning and emotions that we attach to it, we also need to investigate how it relates to humans’ broader embeddedness in political and social space.

Furthermore, I will look into the relationship of mobility and sense of place. Early sense of place studies that were situated within humanistic geography pronounced that sedentarism and thorough, repeated, and long-term acquaintance of place were important for sense of place and deep place attachment (e.g. Hay, 1998b; Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1979). While these contributions regarded place to be static, Massey (1991) and others argued that places are processes and people’s sense of it is continuously developing or is reconsidered or reconfirmed during the experience of everyday life. Lemos (2008) elucidated how urban spaces are (re)created as places that are imbued with meaning through temporary uses.

Additionally, in contrast to the early humanistic studies, more recent writings on migrants’ place-making have shed light on the role of mobility and translocality in the development of equally deep experiences of place. For example, in their analysis of internal US–American migrants’ place identification and construction of a home, Cuba and Hummon (1993: 547) stressed that ‘migration does not preclude an emergent sense of home’ and revealed how migrants developed different patterns of place affiliation that were primarily related to changes in their life cycle. Ehrkamp (2005) pointed to Turkish immigrants’ active creation of their own places and the development of attachments to these places in their migration destination in Germany. Liu (2014) discussed how People’s Republic of China (PRC) migrants constantly load new, fluid and ambivalent meanings on both their place of origin and their new homes in New Zealand.

With the increasing mobility of people and the transience of physical and social spaces that this process entails (cf. Bork-Hüffer 2016; Bork-Hüffer et al. 2016; Lemos, 2008; Mendoza and Morén-Alegret, 2013; Urry, 2007), analyses of mobile subjectivities’ senses of place of the (interim) locations that they migrate to become even more relevant. Mendoza and Morén-Alegret (2013) recently emphasised that ‘the analytical potential of these concepts [place and sense of place] has yet to be fully achieved as far as the study of migratory movements is concerned’ (p. 763). Likewise, while there is a considerable body of literature on sense of place and on migrants’ place-making, much less attention has been paid to the role of ICTs in the emergence of migrants’ sense of place.

Merging existing insights from the above review of literature, I define sense of place as an open, complex notion that is derived from multiple influences. Among these are our sensuous experiences of place, the meanings and emotions that we associate with it and our feelings of attachment and belonging to it. Sense of place embraces the role that place plays for our identity, just as the effect that a specific identity of a place has on our perception of it. The socio-political setting of a place and how we are embedded in it and personally relate to it further affects our sense of it. Sense of place is a process; it emerges and changes progressively. Therefore, new or reconsiderations of past experiences will constantly remould or reconfirm our impressions and feelings about place. Our social embeddedness influences our experience of place and there might be shared meanings and conceptions about a place. Nonetheless, each person perceives a unique individual sense of place, which is fuelled by personal imaginations, past experiences of other places, and personal trajectories and backgrounds, including, for instance, ‘childhood experiences and dreams, education paths, languages spoken and political engagements’ (Mendoza and Morén-Alegret, 2013: 768).

Changes in digital media choice and use during the migration process

In this article, I compare perspectives of migrants who have just arrived in a place, Singapore, with those who have been there for several years to scrutinise the emergence and evolution of their sense of place under the influence of ICT. It is important to indicate the specifics of ICT development in Singapore, of the patterns of ICT use among Singaporeans, of the migration regime in Singapore and the characteristics of the migrant group under analysis here before analysing changes in ICT choice and use throughout the migration and settlement process. Bell (2006) pointed to the greater openness towards technological innovation in Asian societies. In Singapore, the popularity of the Internet combined with the quick development of a very strong ICT infrastructure, affordable subscription fees and national Internet programmes. As a result Singapore achieved a very high Internet access rate earlier compared to many other developed countries (Goby, 2003). By now, excessive use of smartphones in everyday life among Singaporeans has yielded the country the reputation as a ‘smart(phone) nation’ (Hooi, 2014).

The highly hierarchical migration regime in Singapore produces very different life realities among its migrant populace based on their occupation in the city, education, skills, income and capital (c.f. Beaverstock, 2011; Montsion, 2012; Oswin and Yeoh, 2010). In particular, labour regimes and income affect individuals’ opportunities for using digital media and their opportunities to engage with the city (cf. Yeoh, 2006; Yeoh and Huang, 2000; Platt et al. in press). The focus group of this study, that is, highly skilled professionals with German citizenship who are on Employment Passes or hold Permanent Residency, potentially does not face or faces lower financial and work-regime-related barriers with regard to accessing ICT and digital media compared to those who stay in the city on work permits.

As for other groups of fluid transmigrants, Singapore is a transit city for many Germans, which also affects their attachment to the city-state, as will be discussed below. The majority of them are employed by transnational companies on a contract ranging between 2 and 4 years, and they return to Germany or relocate elsewhere afterwards (interviews with the German Association, 19 June 2013 and the German Embassy, 17 July 2013). The German migrants work in various economic sectors in the city (interview with the Singapore-German Chamber of Commerce, 2 August 2013), including the finance, construction, manufacturing, health, law, media and ICT sectors. A smaller segment opened their own businesses or work for education, research, diplomatic or civil society institutions. I chose this group as, in terms of their fluctuation and the variety of occupations, Germans reflect the typical trend of migrant professionals in Singapore. Furthermore, I am a German myself and have good access to the community.

Ten participants of this study were interviewed directly after their arrival in Singapore, that is, in the first weeks after their arrival, while 20 had lived in the city for more than 1 year or up to several decades. Those who just arrived were asked to give an account of their impressions of Singapore directly before their relocation and directly after moving to Singapore to cover the pre-migration and immediate post-migration period. Interviewees were purposefully selected with the aim of covering individuals from various occupational and age groups.

To analyse the influence of digital media on sense of place, it is important to consider the variety of different devices and platforms that are alternately used by individuals to become acquainted with, experience, navigate through and communicate about space and place. As Madianou and Miller (2013) noted, diverse ICTs have created ‘an emerging environment of communicative [and informative] opportunities that functions as an “integrated structure” within which each individual medium is defined in relational terms in the context of all other media’ (p. 170). All of the interviewees owned a computer, most owned a smartphone and many owned a tablet at the time of the interview. Digital media that contributed to the formation of a sense of Singapore included social media (e.g. Facebook, QQ, WhatsApp and Skype) and websites or applications related to navigation and transportation (e.g. Google Maps, Singapore Maps and How2Go), entertainment in the city (e.g. restaurant or food apps, such as HungryGoWhere and event apps as SG Events), and news and socio-political topics (e.g. Straits Times app and socio-political blogs such as Online Citizen). They offered different ways of conceiving digital content through text-based webpages, videos, chat and instant messaging, and voice-over-Internet Protocol (IP), and they were accessed through the general Internet, smartphone or tablet apps.

Interviewees’ choice and use of digital media changed throughout the migration process and during settlement in Singapore, which affected their place perception. Overall, the primary reason to choose and use digital media changed from individual interests and needs in relation to the relocation and/or initial exploration of the city via digital means to the social and emotional ramifications of their use the longer they stayed in Singapore.

The pre-migration period, which I define as the time from which interviewees first thought about moving to Singapore until the actual time of relocation, was characterised by the persistence of already employed devices (computer, tablet and/or smartphone) and, largely, the persistence of a set of digital media platforms and apps that the interviewees used when engaging with Singapore. Among the latter, for example, were Google Maps and Street View, Wikipedia, online travel guides (e.g. Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor), Facebook and YouTube. New websites were usually discovered (e.g. expat forums and pages of the Singapore Ministry of Manpower) via search platforms, such as Google. Only a few interviewees had chosen specific webpages directly based on recommendations from members of their social network or their (new) employer in Singapore. Respondents who migrated on their own tended to invest more energy in their own searches compared to those who were posted by companies. As it was their chosen migration destination, members of the former group had a high personal interest in the city-state, whereas the latter group was often provided with information by their employers.

The primary reason for choosing digital media during this period was to gain basic knowledge on the living situation and conditions (e.g. on housing costs, transportation, schools, kindergartens, etc.) in the city. In addition, several interviewees specifically chose digital media to develop a ‘feeling for the city’. These interviewees looked for visual material, in particular, videos, images or interactive maps.

While the pre-migration period was characterised by routine digital media use, many interviewees started to explore new platforms and apps, and some chose new devices (especially smartphones) during their first months in Singapore. In addition, many reported using digital media more often than before coming to Singapore, especially social media, in addition to navigation and transportation apps. There were different reasons for this increase in the types and intensity of digital media use. First, respondents started adopting social media that are common among their new acquaintances (e.g. WhatsApp, WeChat, QQ and Facebook) or that they needed to keep in contact with people from their place of origin (e.g. via Skype) in cases where they had not already used them. Second, they chose new apps and platforms that helped them to orient and navigate in their new place of living. Third, some used certain online spaces to explore various aspects of Singapore, for instance, to get an idea of places that could be of interest, such as sights to see, places to meet, eat, and drink or for otherwise spending leisure time (e.g. for sports and watching movies). In a few instances, interviewees even used digital methods to explore the city as a substitute for actually visiting places. Some also tried to find apps that would give them insights into the Singaporean culture and society.

Another reason for the increased use of apps was the higher number of apps about Singapore and their practicality compared to the interviewees’ places of origin, for instance, location-specific apps for taxi or event bookings, transportation, navigation, finding restaurants or certain types of food. Christine (28, 4 weeks in Singapore), who had bought her first smartphone after coming to Singapore, commented on her difficulties in getting an overview of available apps: ‘Oh my god, thousands of apps. I am just new to the market, I have to get used to it first’.

The respondents found the apps by randomly searching for them in app stores or via Google Search. At the same time, interviewees tested apps that were recommended to them by new private or work acquaintances. While they started to use some regularly, they eventually found others less useful. Some had downloaded apps they had never used or had only used a few times, but eventually never used again.

Some interviewees who had stayed in other countries before coming to Singapore tried to transfer the patterns of digital media use that they had adopted when moving to those places to Singapore. Florian, who had stayed in Amsterdam for 15 months, where he had used the Facebook group ‘Deutsche in Amsterdam’ (Germans in Amsterdam) to make contacts, looked for a ‘Deutsche in Singapur’ (Germans in Singapore) group. Marie had used Twitter as the main medium for making new contacts when she moved to London, where she had lived for 2 years before coming to Singapore. After moving to the city-state she chose the same strategy.

Several interviewees who had not owned a smartphone before coming to Singapore bought one after their arrival; fewer interviewees had bought a tablet after coming to Singapore. The main reason for buying a smartphone was normative: because everyone else in their new peer groups owned one, the interviewees felt the need to also buy one to be able to maintain contact with their new acquaintances and to be updated by social media groups or other platforms on events and happenings that could be crucial for making new relations. Christine decided to buy a smartphone after she had stayed in Singapore for 4 weeks:

You have to get such a thing; otherwise, you will be excluded, especially the WhatsApp application. They always ask, and then, you never hear from them again because writing SMS, even though you get 800 SMS for free, [is] apparently too much.

However, doubts regarding data security and reservations about the fact that ICT could come to dominate their lives kept some interviewees from buying a smartphone or joining certain social media platforms, such as Facebook. After spending some time in the city, a few of them put their reservations aside, for example, due to the practicality of digital media for navigating the city. Furthermore, exposure to a different culture of ICT usage that is prevalent in Singapore, which I noted above, combined with the related demands of their new peer groups, led some interviewees to adapt to local customs. At the same time, it must be noted that migrant professionals are a specific segment of the society that is probably more likely to positively embrace new communication technologies than the average German.

Those who stayed in the city for several years had more of an established core of devices and digital media platforms that they regularly used. They had a more stable set of apps and Internet platforms that helped them to pursue everyday interests (e.g. for searching for and booking events) or keep updated on happenings in the city. Navigation and transportation apps were still important, but they were used less often, as interviewees had a much better knowledge of the city. They were much less likely to experiment with new apps on their own, and the discovery of new platforms or apps was mostly based on recommendations from others – although there were exceptions; Ines, for example, liked to check out the iPhone ‘apps of the week’. Similar to those who had just arrived and started to make new contacts, the choice of digital media among this group could be influenced by their now more consolidated peer groups, as the following quote shows:

My friends, when we meet and sit together, would have one or two mobiles lying on the table, and then, one of them would say: ‘Oh, by the way, there is this and that app and that is an app that one should really have a look at’. (Gerhardt, 63, three decades in Singapore)

A smartphone or specific app could be something that ‘you have to have’ to blend in with a peer group, or to be able to stay in contact with the peer group, or certain Internet platforms need to be visited to be updated on topics of conversation among the peer group. Using certain devices or digital media could thus also become part of their social identity.

Moreover, some interviewees who had stayed in Singapore for several years visited more local Internet platforms. These included, for instance, socio-political blogs and webpages authored by Singaporeans that served as an alternative source of news and supplemented the government-influenced local media in Singapore. Some also chose to use such platforms to be updated on topics of conversation among local Singaporeans and thus as a way to blend in better with the host society and to ‘become more local’.

Mediated sense of place – the role of digital media in place perception

Given the ever-increasing role of digital content, it is important to inquire as to whether and how digital media frame our place perception compared to physical presence and experience of place. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider whether and how mediated and non-mediated experiences overlap and mutually emboss sense of place. These questions cannot be discussed exhaustively because the opportunities for digital and ‘conventional’ place experience are too numerous and complex, but examples from my fieldwork will be provided that discuss some of the effects of digital media on place perception and the limits of a digital apprehension of place.

Getting a feel for a place

My first example in this section explores how an interviewee purposefully employed digital media to sense and develop a feeling for Singapore before relocating to the city-state. It shows how digital images aroused associations that go far beyond visual impressions. It also emphasises how digital and actual offline experiences of a place can deviate and how sense of place evolves, and in this case, it was fundamentally changed the longer the interviewee stayed in Singapore. Eventually, it exemplifies that the use of digital media can alter people’s practices and therefore their engagements with space as well as, ultimately, their sense of place.

Ulrich is a self-declared fan of Google Street View and likes to zoom in on places of interest and holiday destinations to find out if they match his taste and expectations. Before coming to Singapore he also used this platform to develop a feeling for the city:

I tried, especially on Google maps, with Street View, to just get an impression. I like to do that in all different cities […], and you can take such a walk on the beach to see if it really is that nice, […] I like to do that randomly. I didn’t check before where everything is located, and I also didn’t observe some types of landmarks, but I simply, I am pretty visual in that regard, if something looks pretty, I simply clicked on the street formation. (Ulrich, ~45, 5 years in Singapore)

The interview took place 5 years after he had moved to Singapore. Among the locations on the map – which he had chosen at random – were parts of the outskirts of the city; he remembered seeing some images of Singapore’s typical social housing buildings. He never visited these specific areas and thus never actually saw them offline. Furthermore, some of the images evoked associations of what parts of his life and free time in Singapore could look like. For example, when zooming into images of the entertainment island Sentosa, he imagined himself drinking a beer and relaxing on the beach in the evening. When we met, Ulrich noted that the Singapore that he lives in and experiences every day is very different from the impression he had gained during his first ‘Street View journey’. Nevertheless, he still remembers some of the images today; they remain part of his sense of the city, even though they have paled amidst the everyday experience of places that constitute his life in the city.

Ulrich continues to use Street View before visiting locations in Singapore. Hence, his case can also serve as an example for the relationship of mediated and non-mediated place perception. He uses the programme to explore the surroundings and ambience of places, such as restaurants that were recommended to him by others (offline), to see whether they would match his taste. Thus, he tests offline accounts from members of his social network online, while eventually both offline communications and mediated individual impressions mould his expectations regarding offline place and influence what spaces in the city are explored. Furthermore, it became clear that by employing Street View he intends to gain an impression of places that goes far beyond their mere visual appearance, as he is trying to evaluate the character and aura of a place and intends to imagine how he would feel when being in that place.

The imaginary sensuous perception of place

I chose the second example to discuss restrictions that are implied by a digital apprehension of place. Hereby, I specifically contrast the limits of a digital sensuous percipience of place with the potential of its imaginary sensuous perception through digital media.

Matthias, who has spent more than a decade in Singapore, described the emotions and feelings that Singapore evoked in him, as follows:

This warm feeling, this shield of tropical warmth that surrounds us every day. And that is every day at any day and night time. That. That light. And this, yes, this periwinkle. Yes. Those are the things I downright miss [when I travel …] Pretty existential. The warmth, light, friendly light and the availability of food [laughing], that is what I mean by existential feeling. […] Further, I would say, the impressions that you encounter on the street. […] Often there is a type of music, Asian music of course, Chinese or something […] Here you catch only parts of the conversation [in public space]. That is the part that is in English, and in an English you understand. So much is in Chinese, so much in a different language. This type of background noise … (Matthias, 40, more than a decade in Singapore)

Matthias’ quote expounds a complex sensuous experience of place, and it underlines the meaning of a thermal and gustatory sensation of place, while digital geographers, such as Zook et al. (2004) and Kellerman (2006), have emphasised that digital media’s capacity to convey these sensuous reminiscences and further haptic and olfactory sentience is restrained (cf. section ‘Mediation, Mobility and Sense of Place’). Yet, with Lemos (2008) I wish to underline that it is important not to neglect the fact that the use of digital media can potentially arouse imaginary sensuous experiences of place (cf. section ‘Mediation, Mobility and Sense of Place’), which, as I argue, are just as much a part of our overall sense of place. Among such mediated associations that my interviewees had were the smell and taste of food that they saw in online pictures, the warm temperature in Singapore or the touch of a breeze. For example, when I asked Lena what things about Singapore she remembered seeing online before her relocation, she told me: ‘Food! It made my mouth water when I saw it’ (Lena, 32, 10 days in Singapore). Exploring all the different types of Singaporean dishes was one of the things on her to-do list in Singapore. Tobias told me that he remembered seeing a video on YouTube where people ‘sweat like hell. I thought, yap, Singapore is hot. Made me sweat too, just by looking at it [in the video]’ (Tobias, 37, 2 months in Singapore).

Considering other limits of a mediated place perception, it must be noted that watching an online video or seeing an online image of the same street scene that Matthias described makes the person watching it an uninvolved spectator rather than a participant in space, who, even if only indirectly, interacts with the social and physical environment around her or him. Furthermore, visual material, such as videos or interactive maps, as in the case of the Street View example above, mirrors only certain aspects of the larger social and political setting of a place. In addition, the camera directs the focus of attention. Aural perception is altered through media as microphones transmit the acoustic impulses in a different way than the human ear does, and every participant filters the potpourri of sounds in a different way depending on their interests (e.g. in the music or in the conversation of others), language skills, and so on. These examples emphasise that as a different frame through which the world is perceived (cf. Miller and Horst, 2013; section ‘Mediation, Mobility and Sense of Place’), digital media create a different experience of place.

Socio-political space and place attachment

I am going to use another quote from an interview with Matthias to emphasise the relevance of political and social space in (mediated) place perception and place attachment. In addition, I employ it to raise the issue of time in the development of sense of place, in general, and of deep place attachment, in particular.

Matthias is well-networked and has a local partner whose family, according to him, has become his own. Through his family, but also his work, he has established close ties with Singaporeans, and being a member of these circles is one aspect that encourages him to keep a close lens on the socio-political issues and themes debated in the city-state. As the print and broadcast media are highly regulated and controlled in Singapore, he has come to consult various types of parallel online sources to keep informed. Among these are especially blogs and socio-political websites authored by Singaporeans and other social media platforms. Being up-to-date on happenings in the city is greatly relevant for maintaining ties and blending in with his local colleagues and local friends and family:

I think that this is something that I know because I am becoming part of those circles [of his local family, friends and colleagues], slowly. Hearsay. However, it depends. Either I see it myself because I find these blogs and websites interesting by now […] Sometimes I find things in the Today [a free English newspaper issued by MediaCorp that is owned by the government-owned investment company Temasek Holdings …] if you read in this paper that something happened […] and this and that politician said something about it, then you can be sure that there has been a debate for one or two weeks [in the blogs and socio-political websites …]. But, if you read it only then [when it was published in the mainstream media], which sometimes happens to me too, then that ship sailed, the boat is gone, then you don’t need to - - -, right?

He argues that if he did not consult his online sources, he would miss out on many important happenings in the city-state and then would not be able to connect with his peers through these topics. His example thus highlights the close and inseparable intertwining of online and offline space and place (cf. Chan, 2008; Crang et al., 1999; section ‘Mediation, Mobility and Sense of Place’). In addition, it shows how following these socio-political discussions has become part of his social identity.

His account reveals how experiencing discussions and feelings of the local community online combined with his offline encounters deepen his attachment and bonding to the city and therefore his sense of place. Additionally, it demonstrates how Matthias’ sense of the city and his identity are very much linked to his perception of the socio-political assemblage and the everyday micro- and macro-politics of space (cf. Massey, 2012⁷; section ‘Mediation, Mobility and Sense of Place’). It thus highlights the socio-political nature of sense of place beyond its mere sensuous perception, which came through in the quote from the interview with him above (section ‘Imaginary Sensuous Perception of Place’).

Regarding the role of time in the development of place attachment, however, such deep bonding to Singapore, as Matthias felt, was not prevalent among interviewees who had recently arrived in Singapore. Nevertheless, time spent in the city alone did not automatically correlate with people’s attachment to it. Peter, who had stayed in the city for 6 years with his wife and child, who was born during their stay, does not feel any particular bond to places in the city other than his home that go beyond the functional qualities that they have for him. What seemed to be important for place bonding was the strength of the social network. Peter had never managed to establish a local social network, while Matthias and others who had a strong social network felt more attached to the city.

Nonetheless, I wish to emphasise that independent of the time spent in Singapore, all of my interviewees held a certain sense of the city – even those migrants who are very new and lack any ‘rootedness’ (Hay, 1998a: 246), which early humanistic writers (as Hay, 1998b; Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1979) regarded as a precondition for the development of sense of place. All interviewees revealed a certain vicissitude of their senses of the city. The ones of interviewees who had spent less time in Singapore were even more variable.

Conclusions

While it is well established that digital media use does not lead to ‘placelessness’ (Relph, 1976), my study highlights some of its effects on the way that places are experienced. I also emphasise that for a better understanding of sense of place, we need to consider the complex and multifarious factors that influence its emergence and that we have to recognise its openness by scrutinising how it progresses through time.

As a different frame through which we see the world (Miller and Horst, 2013), digital media convey experiences of place that differ from ‘conventional’ ones. I highlight that while digital media pronounce the visual and aural apprehension of place, they also evoke imaginary olfactory, gustatory and tactile associations. Mediated content and discourse may stir feelings and emotions about a place and may also contribute to people’s deep engagement and attachment to it. Use of online media can alter people’s practices in offline space and arouse complex senses of places in the city that have never been explored offline.

At the same time, analysing only people’s physical engagements with space, or focusing only on their digital ones would be insufficient for understanding the genesis of their senses of the city, which are simultaneously engraved by multifarious online and offline experiences. The digital apprehension of place is never fully isolated from experiences in the physical world; even if the specific place in question has not been physically explored, past experiences of other physical and social spaces feed into individuals’ knowledge and selective percipience of digitally experienced place. As digital sense of place combines with offline sense of place, the use of digital media contributes to the multiplicity and complexity of sense of place.

One of the aspects to consider in understanding the role of digital media in migrants’ sense of place is how their choice and use of specific digital media platforms changes throughout the migration process and how this has reciprocal effects on place perception. While my interviewees’ distinct impressions of Singapore, their individual choices and use of a specific set of digital media for certain purposes varied, there were some similarities in terms of the stages of engagement with digital media through the migration process and settlement in the city-state. Experimentation with digital media in the immediate post-migration period opened new gateways to the city and to place perception. While some of the apps and platforms that interviewees explored were not used later, the experience of using them and their content left their ‘marks’ in people’s memory and partly on their sense of place. Interest in place and experimentation with media conditioned each other reciprocally: interest in certain places or activities led to the choice of certain media, while their use led to the discovery of new spaces, their specific facets and the creation of new senses of these places. Those who had stayed in Singapore for a longer time used a more stable core of devices and new media platforms while their choice was related to the social and emotional consequences of their use.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: I am grateful to the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Foundation, Germany, and the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, for funding the research on which this article is based.

Notes

Author biography

Tabea Bork-Hüffer is Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS) since 2 January 2013. She has studied geography, sociology and social anthropology at the Universities of Bonn, Belfast and Cologne and received the national award of the Association of Geographers at German Universities (Verband der Geographen an Deutschen Hochschulen [VGDH]) for her PhD thesis (‘Migrants’ Health Seeking Actions in Guangzhou China’, Steiner Publishers 2012). Her research interests and publications centre around the changing geographies of internal and international migration, migrant health and health governance, and the role of new media in migrants’ place perception with a regional focus on China, Southeast Asia and Germany.

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