https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.127
Presence, Absence, Anonymity: Gendered Mobility in the Age of Location-Aware Media
SREESHMA K.
PhD Scholar
AJK Mass Communication Research Centre
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
sreeshma.suresh@gmail.com
Abstract: The paper examines how location-aware social media platforms reshape women’s experience of urban public space through new regimes of visibility, surveillance, and digital identity. Historically, women’s access to and movement within public spaces have been closely monitored and socially regulated. With the proliferation of locative media such as Google Maps, Instagram and Snapchat, women’s mobility in the city is increasingly negotiated through technological interfaces that mediate presence, safety and anonymity. Drawing on qualitative observations of young women in Kochi, Kerala, this study explores how everyday practices such as self-tracking, location previewing and selective location sharing becomes strategies for navigating unfamiliar urban environments. These practices reveal a paradox: while location-aware apps intensify the possibility of surveillance, they are simultaneously appropriated by women as tools of navigation, control and what may be understood as forms of ‘counter surveillance.’ The paper argues that digital presence does not merely represent women’s movement through the city but actively produces new spatial experiences shaped by platform logics. Moreover, location-sharing practices followed by women on platforms like Snapchat allow us to reflect on why they often choose to remain anonymous while marking their presence in a particular location. This negotiation of presence and absence highlights how technology reconfigures gendered relations with public space, safety and privacy. By situating these practices within the context of an urban Global South city, the paper contributes to discussions on gender and technology, surveillance and privacy, and the role of social media in producing contemporary spatial experience.
Keywords: Gendered mobility, Locative media, Digital special agency, Urban public space, Digital urbanism
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